Leadership with ASCA

A major theme that stuck out for me during this week's readings was that of leadership. This is also a main element of the ASCA National Model. It is becoming much clearer to me that being a school counselor means being a leader within your school and district. Without you there would be no one else to advocate for a counseling program and no one else who is so actively involved in every aspect of a child's live. While finishing up my school counseling interviews and summarizing our conversations, I noticed that leadership was a crucial part of what makes a counseling program successful. Without having that leadership within school, school counselors may get pushed aside or used incorrectly. We need to be advocating for not only the students but for ourselves. A successful counseling program can benefit an entire school environment. There was a clear difference between the three counselors that I interviewed for the research project. The woman that I spoke of last week in my blog spends a great deal of her time advocating for a comprehensive school counseling program. She also makes sure to communicate with all stakeholders and ensures that she is spending the majority of her time where it is needed. I believe that her taking an active role in the state and national organizations as well as coordinating monthly meetings with the district's counselors allows her to lead her school in a positive direction. In comparison, I interviewed a school counselor from the same district at the high school level and there was such a huge difference in the program. Even though it is clear that the district as a whole supports ASCA and what a comprehensive program can do for its students, the high school is not using ASCA at all. The woman I met with described to me that there is little time to complete all that is required and so many other things need to be done instead. She mentioned the importance of a career education program yet discussed how difficult it was to set up. In my opinion, she seemed content with how the program was functioning and did not seem to want to make any changes. This really demonstrated to me that as a school counselor it is my responsibility to advocate for a comprehensive school counseling program and make sure that steps are being taken to benefit the school and the students. If I do not take those steps then no one else will.

While reading this week's article, "Initiating Leadership by Introducing and Implementing the ASCA National Model" (Schwallie-Giddis, Ter Matt & Pak, 2003), I was able to pick out different ways that school counselors need to become leaders within their schools. One important aspect is that whoever the counseling coordinator is, they should be communicating regularly with the school administration as well as other school counselors in the district. In order to be a successful leader, the school counselors much establish good working relationships with all stakeholders and therefore allow a cooperative effort to occur. Creating this positive line of communication is important but not always done. We need to take those steps to form a team within the school that is all working towards the same goal. Another part of the article that I thought was a great idea was the summit that was held to introduce ASCA and open up that communication. It seemed to benefit greatly the participants by having the opportunity to discuss what ASCA can bring and what is needed in order for it to be successful. Within our school districts we can create these conversations and meeting times to promote the program and show its success.

Once again while I was reading Chapter 6 (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012), I noticed the importance of leadership within the delivery models of a school counseling program. There are so many different models that can be used within a school and it is the counselor's job to determine what would be the best one to use for their particular school. Being a leader means making beneficial decisions for your school environment in the hopes to help as many students as possible. Because every school district is so different, as a school counselor you should know what resources you have available to you and be able to fight for more. Being viewed as a leader can be helpful in this fight to support the students. As Dollarhide & Saginak (2012) discussed many of the delivery models it became apparent that many of the programs and organizational styles involve the counselor taking a stand and creating change within their school. For example being able to organize programs for the teachers and students to work together to help each other. Not only will this help the school but it gives more time to the school counselor to help in other areas. Some ideas were TAPs, peer mentoring and peer tutoring, or teacher-counselor lessons within the classroom. The counselor needs to be responsible to set these programs up and make sure they run smoothly. I can see how crucial being a leader within your school can be. I believe it can make all the difference in the world and as a school counselor I will need to take the same steps.

Dollarhide, C. & Saginak, K. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs: K-12 delivery systems in action (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Schwallie-Giddis, P., ter Maat, M., & Pak, M. (2003, Feb). Initiating Leadership by Introducing and Implementing the ASCA National Model. Professional School Counseling, 6(3), 170-174.