Needs Assessments and the Role of the School Counselor
Selected Statements
- Feeling sad or depressed
- Skills for resolving conflicts
- Getting along with other students better
- Concerns about alcohol and/or drug use
School counselors play a pivotal role in carrying out school counseling programs to improve the performance of learners. Accordingly, the improvement of a learner should be perceived from the aspects of social and psychological status of students. The counseling programs designed by the experts help learners to ensure career, social, and emotional development opportunities. It is important to note that learners tend to face many challenges in the learning environment. There is a need to guide them on how to tackle the prevailing challenges to go against all odds and achieve their career goals. Therefore, counselors directly influence the activities of the school.Every learning institution should be ready to involve counselors in their programs. Accordingly, counsellors play a critical role in ensuring that learners are in good position to learn in a peaceful environment and they fight their challenges to concentrate on their studies. The college planning will create a slot for counseling programs to ensure that learners are ready to learn when they are emotionally and psychologically stable. The role of a counselor is a school academic is far reaching. Firstly, the counselor interrogates the social changes hindering learners from performing in school. Accordingly, counselors advise students and help them go through social challenges that are likely to affect their academic performance. Learning in the class is not always absolute in achieving academic success. Instead, the school should ensure that learners are emotionally stable to perform academically.
The role of counselors in schools is not questionable. They guide learners in all aspects of life. For instance, counselors can use a relevant therapy to stop learners from using drugs and substance abuse. In this case, the counselor will explain the dangers of using drugs. Besides, the counselors can solve the sadness and depression of students by interrogating the challenges affecting them. Usually, depression can emanate from the immediate surrounding or other social problems. In this regard, the counselor will analyze the challenges strategically to encourage the learners to keep grinding. Furthermore, counselors can help learners solve conflicts in both the learning environment and at home. Accordingly, counselors should expose students to various anger management mechanisms to ensure that they do not overreact during disagreements. Finally, counselors should find a way of building a close relationship among learners. Usually, students should embrace teamwork to learn from each other in the school. The counselor will explain the importance of building a strong team and solve problems together. Therefore, a counselor should provide all approaches that ensure that learners achieve their academic success.
School counselors also pay a critical role in the developmental, behavioral, and social interventions in the lives of learners. Accordingly, the behaviors of learners are perceived to be either moral or immoral depending on how they carry out themselves. It is important to note that school counselors should help learners differentiate moral behaviors from the immoral ones. Good behaviors will help learners stop using drugs, have good relationships among themselves, deal with stress positively, and manage anger during conflicts. Besides, the counselors share the broad school programs with the students and explain to them the need to perform academically.
