School District Of Lee County Observes National School Counseling Week

From The School District of Lee County:

February 1, 2021

National School Counseling Week highlights the impact of school counselors and comprehensive school counseling programs in helping students achieve academic success, plan for a career, and develop healthy social/emotional skills. National School Counseling Week focuses public attention on the contributions of professional school counselors and how students are positively impacted by their specialized services. National School Counseling Week is also an excellent time for school counselors to remind students and parents of the comprehensive services they provide to children. Please help us show school counselors how much their work is appreciated during National School Counseling Week.

The School Counselor's Role

School counselors support students’ academic success by:

• Leading development of a safe and caring school culture
• Delivering a school counseling program based on data identifying student needs
• Delivering information to students and teachers within the school counseling curriculum on best practices in mindsets and behaviors (i.e., learning strategies, self-management skills, social skills) and metacognition skills (McGuire, 2015) critical in academic success
• Providing relevance to academic effort and educational pursuits by assisting in students’ career planning and future career-related goals
• Working with administration, teachers and other school staff to create a school environment encouraging academic success and striving to one’s potential (Stone & Clark, 2001)
• Working to remove barriers to access and provide students with the opportunity for academic challenge in the most rigorous coursework possible
• Establishing data analysis methods to identify and target systemic barriers deterring equitable access
• Providing opportunities for students to:
  • Enhance their self-efficacy beliefs and competence
  • Develop attributional beliefs
  • See value in tasks related to achievement
  • Develop mastery/learning goals
  • Develop autonomy
  • Relate to others (Rowell & Hong, 2013)
• Working to establish student opportunities for academic remediation as needed
• Emphasizing family-community-school relationships in addressing academic needs (Brown, 1999)

This press release was produced by The School District of Lee County. The views expressed are the author's own.