Blog 9 – Chapter 11 and Leadership Practices of School Counselors article

Blog 9 – Chapter 11 and Leadership Practices of School Counselors article

This chapter provided a lot of language for us to use later when speaking about what we would like our leadership within our school to look like. Prior to reading this chapter I was having some trouble defining clearly what my leadership as a counselor in a school would consist (and not consist) of. I think keeping a vision of the overall program and looking ahead at the future movement of the program will be very challenging as it is easy to get wrapped up in our daily duties. I also reflected when reading the Process Model of Leadership in Dollarhide and Saginak’s chapter (2012) to remember to challenge the process and enable others to act. This is a great strength of my current counselor, when she feels that expectations do not align with our population of teachers or students or teachers are not reaching the expectation need to get the best from our students she speaks up. She also, pushes others into action that best benefits our students; she is definitely viewed as a leader. On the other hand when others disagree with her she is open to hear their opinions and views; however I feel like the longer she has been around this has decreased (as reported by older teachers).

The study in the article made some interesting conclusions about leadership in counseling even thought, as it stated many times, much more research needs to be done around this topic. The article brings up many points that many of us may not have considered when thinking about why counselors may or may not be viewed as leaders in the school setting. The one area of school counselors as leaders that was definitely missing from this study is what leadership looks like as a counselor. The leadership roles that school counselors are finding themselves in in some of my school district schools are not the leadership roles they want to be in, they define their job as having too much of a leadership role in their school, which impedes on the work they do.

Dollarhide, C. & Saginak, K. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs: K-12 delivery

systems in action (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Mason, E. C. M., McMahon, H. G. (2009). Leadership practices of school counselors.

Professional School Counseling, 13(2), 107-115.