Blog #10 - Chapter 9 and article

As I was reading through chapter 9 I had mixed feelings about the information.  I think that the information presented was incredibly helpful in making sure that the lessons that we are designing have a structure and a flow to them, but I still have questions about us actually being able to present guidance lessons in a classroom.  There was also an excellent quote on page 144 that says, “To be effective with our students, we have to know, deep in our souls, that what we tach has value, has meaning, and has the ring of human truth to it” (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012).  This quote is so important because as future school counselors we have to remember where our passion comes from for this job and being able to convey that to the students will go a long way in connecting with them.

All of the steps on creating a lesson plan are helpful in making sure that it will be effective but that still does not mean that we will be able to get into the classrooms.  Dollarhide & Saginak (2012) discuss “curricular integration” and trying to get the lesson to aline with what is being taught in the class at the time (p. 147).  In a perfect world this would be easy and after we come up with a lesson that deals with what is being taught in a particular class and we present it to a teacher they allow us to teach the lesson during their class.  The tables on pages 148-151 are very useful in coming up with lesson plans and figuring out where they fit into the curriculum.  These tables give us a good basis to go on and to build from with our own lesson plans.  However, I do not think that this is a realistic picture of how we are going to be received in a school when we approach teachers about doing a guidance lesson.  One of the counselors that I interviewed for our project earlier this semester told me that she doesn’t do any guidance lessons during class time because the teachers will not allow her to and the counselors are no longer allowed to do them.  She did tell me that she will occasionally go into different homerooms and do a guidance lesson because that is the only option that she has.  I think that this is a more realistic picture of what we are going to face when trying to do a lesson in a classroom in that depending on the teacher we will probably face a lot of resistance. 

I also really liked the article reading for this week because as a middle school field hockey coach and someone who enjoys working with the middle school population this article was a good refresher on the developmental changes that middle school kids go through.  I also liked how the article really integrated the ASCA National Model into being a middle school counselor because I think it gives a more realistic picture of how this would fit into a middle school. 

Akos, P. (2005). The unique nature of middle school counseling. Professional School Counseling, 9(2), 95-103.

Dollarhide, C. T., & Saginak, K. A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs (2nd Ed.).  New York: Pearson, Inc.