School counselor roles and responsibilities

Education - Technology

What it Means to be a School Counselor

Careers in education are not easy, but careers in education are necessary and vital to the success of students. School Counselor is one of those challenging and necessary careers in education. It is a challenge to define what exactly a counselor does because a counselor does so much; it can be confusing as to when to the job ends. School Counselors, though, provide many critical services and serve as support to students and teachers alike. People can be school counselors and provide services at all stages of education. Most schools have counselors that have primary and secondary aged students. The School Counselor is not just for students who are having problems. There are a few parts or areas of interest that are within the purview of the school counselor that are related to the emotional and psychological health of students, without taking the form of counseling or therapy sessions.

School Counselors ensure that students are academically and psychologically ready to move on to the next stage of their lives and their educations. For example, counselors of/at high schools are in charge of ensuring that those students are who going to college are adequately prepared and supported to do so. Counselors prepare high school students for both college and career readiness because not all students go to college, and not all students go to college immediately upon graduating from high school. Counselors additionally are in charge of the personal and social planning for every student. This is an ongoing process. Counselors make sure students are taking the right classes -- that they have some greater awareness of the trajectory of their academic lives or course work. Counselors help students see the big picture, whether it is regarding their personal lives or their academic lives. Counselors can help students find ways to develop and cultivate interests and skills through clubs and other productive activities for those students' ages and development.

It is a large job to be a counselor, because it is usually one counselor that performs all these services for all of the students in one particular school. School Counseling has the definite potential to be exhausting, as well as has the potential to be greatly rewarding, especially when considering students who have struggled personally and/or academically as part of their journey of personal success and achievement in their goals, whatever they may be. Some counselors have educational and professional backgrounds in other fields such as Social Work, Psychology, Applied Behavior Analysis, and more.