A Study About the Necessity For Counselling and Proper Guidance of Students at Secondary Level Schools

School counseling programs in Tennessee have always played an important role in the total educational process for our children and youth. School counselors work with students, families, communities, faculties and staff addressing the issues that have a substantial impact on student academic, personal/social and career development. Wherever counselors serve, be it in rural, urban or suburban areas, they strive to meet the needs of all students. There is a general belief that our public schools are at a critical point and that priorities must change if our schools are to provide the education that will enable our youth to function successfully in our complex society. Across the nation, school counselors are responding to the challenges and expectations by changing traditional position-centered (counselor-centered) services to data-driven, student-centered services. The Tennessee Model for Comprehensive School Counseling represents what a school counseling program should contain and serves as an organizational tool to identify and prioritize the elements necessary for program implementation. Such programs are vital to the school improvement process. School counselors work strategically as part of an instructional team to promote student success. They are specially trained educators in a position to call attention to situations within our schools that impact student learning. Serving as leaders and advocates, school counselors work collaboratively to provide services in a proactive, developmental and preventative manner. Young people today live in a complex world, are exposed at a much earlier age to pressures of the adult life and do not have the same familial supports as students in the eighties or sixties. A school for many students is the main source of stability and guidance in their lives. The guidance counselors plays a central role in ensuring that the whole school Guidance Programme, in collaboration with all staff members, is effective in meeting the pastoral care needs of all the students. The increasing identification of mental health issues among young people highlights the particular need for guidance and Counselling services within school to respond to individual students in distress. Bringing the guidance and Counselling allocation within the quota makes this essential one to one service very difficult if not impossible to achieve.

The aims of the guidance and counseling service are similar to the purposes of education in general—to assist the student in fulfilling her basic physiological needs, understanding herself and acceptance of others, developing associations with peers, balancing between permissiveness and controls in the educational setting, realizing successful achievement, and providing opportunities to gain independence. The purposes of guidance and counseling provide emphasis and strength to the educational program. To Provide for the Realization of Student Potentialities - To all students, the school offers a wide choice of courses and co-curricular activities. A significant function of education is to help students identify and develop their potentialities. The counselor's role is to assist students to distribute their energies into the many learning opportunities available to them. Every student needs help in planning his major course of study and pattern of co-curricular activities. To Help Children with Developing Problems - Even those students who have chosen an appropriate educational program for themselves may have problems that require help. A teacher may need to spend from one-fifth to one-third of his time with a few pupils who require a great deal of help, which deprives the rest of the class from the teacher's full attention to their needs. The counselor, by helping these youngsters to resolve their difficulties, frees the classroom teacher to use his time more efficiently. To contribute to the Development of the School's Curriculum - Counselors, in working with individual students, know their personal problems and aspirations, their talents and abilities, as well as the social pressures confronting them. Counselors, therefore, can provide data that serve as a basis for curriculum development, and they can help curriculum developers shape courses of study that more accurately reflect the needs of students. Too often, counselors are not included in curriculum development efforts.

The major goals of counseling are to promote personal growth and to prepare students to become motivated workers and responsible citizens. Educators recognize that in addition to intellectual challenges, students encounter personal/social, educational, and career challenges. School guidance and counseling programs The guidance and counseling program is an integral part of a school's total educational program; it is developmental by design, focusing on needs, interests, and issues related to various stages of student growth. School counselors provide mental, emotional, social, developmental and behavioral services to students. The three domains of responsibility of the school counselor are categorized as: academic, career, and personal/social. Effective counseling programs are important to the school climate and a crucial element in improving student achievement. School counselors are trained professionals, licensed or certified by law and/or regulation in all 50 states. School counselors are required to obtain graduate education in counseling as an entry-level prerequisite for state licensing. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing notes that the complex needs of today’s pupils emphasize the need for comprehensive counseling and guidance programs in schools. The foundation of the school counseling profession contains knowledge and professional attitudes that promote student development, learning and achievement. School counselors must have knowledge of the laws and ethics of counseling specific to children in California schools. Effective school counseling is further supported by knowledge of state and national standards for school counseling and by familiarity with models of effective comprehensive school counseling and guidance programs. In many cases, there is a lack of understanding about how the work of school counselors impacts student outcomes. Historically, school counselors were trained under the mental health provider model with an emphasis on 1:1 counseling. This trend is changing as counselors are gaining the necessary training to expand their services to provide a broader impact on students’ academic, career as well as personal and social domains. The focus of counselors’ work is related to career planning and placement, problem solving, and class scheduling. Under this model, counselors are spending the majority of their time providing services to a small number of students who have the greatest needs. They are providing individual counseling services to the most needy students and are reacting to crisis situations as they arise.

SERVICES

The primary mission of a school's guidance and counseling program is to provide a broad spectrum of personnel services to the students. These services include student assessment, the information service,

facilitate the growth and development of all students from kindergarten through post high school experiences. Assessment - The assessment service is designed to collect, analyze, and use a variety of objective and subjective personal, psychological, and social data about each pupil. Its purpose is to help the individual to better understand herself. Conferences with pupils and parents, standardized test scores, academic records, anecdotal records, personal data forms, case studies, and portfolios are included. The school counselor interprets this information to pupils, parents, teachers, administrators, and other professionals. Pupils with special needs and abilities are thus identified. Information - The information service is designed to provide accurate and current information in order that the students may make an intelligent choice of an educational program, an occupation, or a social activity. Essentially, the aim is that with such information students will make better choices and will engage in better planning in and out of the school setting. Students must not only be exposed to such information but must also have an opportunity to react to it in a meaningful way with others. Placement and Follow-up - The school assists the student in selecting and utilizing opportunities within the school and in the outside labor market. Counselors assist students in making appropriate choices of courses of study and in making transitions from one school level to another, one school to another, and from school to employment. Placement thereby involves pupil assessment, informational services, and counseling assistance appropriate to the pupil's choices of school subjects, co-curricular activities, and employment. Follow-up is concerned with the development of a systematic plan for maintaining contact with former students. The data obtained from the follow-up studies aid the school in evaluating the school's curricular and guidance programs. Counseling - The counseling service is designed to facilitate self-understanding and development through dyadic or small-group relationships. The aim of such relationships tends to be on personal development and decision making that is based on self-understanding and knowledge of the environment. The counselor assists the student to understand and accept himself thereby clarifying his ideas, perceptions, attitudes, and goals; furnishes personal and environmental information to the pupil, as required, regarding his plans, choices, or problems; and seeks to develop in the student the ability to cope with/and solve problems and increased competence in making decisions and

1) Provides career development and educational and occupational information 2) Provides primary prevention instruction in areas such as sexual abuse and substance abuse at appropriate grade levels 3) Provides enhancement instruction in areas such as self-concept, interpersonal relations, and decision making appropriate to student development 4) Uses teacher and student participation in the implementation of the guidance and counseling program

The nine school counseling program standards are identical to the American School Counselor Association National Standards and support the Counseling Department's mission and vision. The standards are statements of what students should know and be able to do as a result of participating in a school counseling program and follow the three universally accepted domains of counseling programs: academic, career, and personal/social development. Student competencies, which help to identify student knowledge and skills, follow each of the standards. Priorities were established based on the district strategic priorities and school improvement and are delineated by the Pre-K, Elementary, Middle, or High school levels. The developmental organization for the acquisition of knowledge and skills is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Pre – K students become aware; elementary students learn; middle schoolers practice; and, high school students are expected to demonstrate or model what they have learned.

COUNSELING PROCEDURES

Counseling students is one of the basic functions of the school guidance program. Counseling skills are needed by school principals, teachers, teacher-advisors, athletic coaches, and club sponsors as well as by professional counselors. Although counseling of serious emotional problems is best handled by professional counselors, teachers and other faculty personnel find themselves in situations daily where counseling is necessary. Acquaintance with Counseling methods and points of view have developed from research and theories about how individuals grow and develop, change their behavior, and interact with their environment. These counseling methods are generally classified into three broad types or schools of thought: directive, nondirective, and eclectic. One of the most fundamental philosophical and theoretical questions that confronts the counselor in the course of her training and professional practice is which method to select in counseling students. The directive counselor is said to be more interested in the problem than he is in the counselee. This belief is an exaggeration. The student and her problem cannot be separated. All service professions are, by their very nature, concerned with the person to be helped. All teaching, for example, is pupil centered even when a teacher has thirty students in a class. The directive counselor, however, focuses attention on identifying and analyzing the problem and finding an appropriate solution to it. He tends to make use of test data, school records, and reports, and to be more disposed to giving advice and information based on such data. Directive counseling is the method most commonly used by counselors in school settings. Directive counseling seems to be most successful when the counselee is relatively well adjusted, the problem is in an intellectual area, a lack of information constituted the problem, the counselee has little insight into the problem, inner conflict is absent, and the client suffers from anxiety, insecurity, or impatience (Coleman, 2009; Parsons, 2009a). The nondirective approach is more effective in the treatment of many types of emotional problems. However, many students who come to the counselor have few if any such emotional problems. Many cases merely call for information or some other routine assistance. Possibly the greatest contribution of the nondirective technique has been its influence in personalizing counseling. Nevertheless, even though this approach may be more effective in certain counseling situations, it is unlikely that this approach will be used in most schools because of the extreme training essential to its application in the counseling process. Eclectic counseling is the result of selecting concepts from both directive and nondirective approaches. Thus, the eclectic counselor uses whatever approach seems best suited to the situation. Real help given to most students in schools would be located between the highly directive and the eclectic views rather than client centered. The effectiveness of the counselor will depend more on the relationship existing between the student and

Guidance and counseling services play an integral part in the overall student services department of any elementary or secondary school. The aims of guidance and counseling programs in schools are to assist individuals to develop the ability to understand themselves, to solve their own problems, and to make appropriate adjustments to their environment. Major guidance services include student appraisal, information giving, placement and follow-up, and counseling. The inspiration for embracing a far reaching school counseling system is to furnish instructors with the model for effectively supervising the 21st Century issues challenging scholars, families, and the augmented group. Inclusive counseling customizes reflect the stimulus for change and are the establishment to give every kid, immature, and family with the instruments vital for advancing continuing abilities to administer school and future tests. School guides press on to recognize imaginative routes of gathering those continually-modifying mandates of scholars' lives and societal updates in Springfield. The advancement of school counseling to where we are today could be portrayed by the philosophical movement from an immediate understudy fix model to a thorough model. The Comprehensive Developmental Guide (CDG) Program model, started in the 1970's, accentuated school counseling as a key part of the instructive system, as opposed to auxiliary frameworks of backing aids. Direction curriculum, which fortified particular structured capabilities in the Academic, Profession, and Personal/Social spaces, was configured for provision to the whole person residents (McGannon, Carey, & Dimmmitt, 2005). The headway of school counseling proceeded when the American School Counselor Association discharged "The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Directing Programs". The ASCA schema was made according to the request for an increasingly principles-based framework with underpinnings in both responsibility and usage of information to drive person accomplishment.

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