THE SCHOOL COUNSELOR'S ROLE

School counselors support students’ academic success by:

• Leading the 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) is critical to 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 for 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).

ASCA Position Statement: The School Counselor and Academic Development