Personal Reflection on Aspired Role of a School Counselor
- Where have you been?
- Educational: I have been studying in the school counselor program in the last few years.
- Professionally: I have been working with the school system with disabled kids, whereby my duties include but not limited to counseling them on education matters.
- Personally: I have been sympathetic and compassionate to people who need my help.
- Where are you today?
- Educational: I am still studying in the school counselor program with a year left.
- Professionally: I am still working in the school system with disabled kids, with counseling them and their parents being my primary tasks.
- Personally: Apart from being compassionate and sympathetic, I have acquired excellent listening skills and creative problem-solving skills.
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III. Where do you want to go?
- Educationally (Short-term 1-5 years and long-term 5-10 years): At the end of the school counselor program, I want to attain a post-graduate degree in counseling so that I acquire knowledge relating to academic standards. In particular, I want to achieve an understanding of various educational and vocational pathways. In this way, I will have the ability to assess academic, social, and behavioral performance to provide appropriate counseling advice
- Professional (Short-term 1-5 years and long-term 5-10 years): I want to become a school counselor within the public school system or university.
- C. Personally (Short-term 1-5 years and long-term 5-10 years): I want to be a great communicator, compassionate, creative problem solver, empathetic, and more so patient counselor.
- What are your strengths?
My areas of strength include proper communicator, patient, and compassionate. These are highly suitable qualities to enable appropriate interpersonal engagement and communications in a school counseling role.
- What are your challenges or areas to grow-in?
The area of challenges, in which I need to grow and improve, is cultural competence. Mainly, this will ensure my ability to identify and resist the influence of personal biases and prejudices in interactions and communications with members of different cultural, ethnic, racial, and social groups, especially in an increasingly cosmopolitan society.
- Prepare a reflection statement by describing your motivation for seeking entry into the school counseling profession.
The role of a school counselor is a multi-faceted and highly variable one depending on the contexts and needs in individual schooling environments. They involve counseling, career and vocational guidance, instruction on social and psychological issues, leadership in crises, and collaboration, and contributions in school management initiatives.
What is your role as a school counselor? What is your role to your students, parents, community?
The primary role of a school counselor is to aid in the planning, coordinating, responding to, and advocating for the emotional requirements of victims in crises. Notably, the school counselor does this through the provision of direct counseling in the course of and following incidents. Besides, the school counselor further assumes a leadership position in this situation and engages in collaborative management and leadership roles alongside school management and community stakeholders for efficient preparedness and efficiency in addressing crises. For students, the school counselor offers counseling and guidance services to promote their social and emotional wellbeing and academic success. The counselor collaborates and engages with parents to manage the needs and welfare of students and support their academic and personal development. Again, the counselor engages actively with the community, principals, and teachers to manage, plan, coordinate, and respond effectively to the needs of affected persons. The school counselor’s engagement focuses on crises in the school environment, ensure preparedness to counter such situations, and foster the wellbeing, development, and success of students academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. Further, the school counselor collaborates with peer counselors to improve the profession of school counseling through promotions of creativity and better capacities to handle diverse issues.
How do you think that you can make a difference in someone’s life?
I am confident about my ability to make a difference in others’ lives through a better understanding of their needs, experiences, and perspectives. As noted earlier, patience and compassion are my strengths. These strengths shall enable me to interact closely with others and acquire a competent understanding of their perspectives, challenges, needs, and desires, such that I can make highly appropriate and practical recommendations and interventions to meet their requirements.
What makes a good leader, and what type of leader will you be.
I think that a good leader is one who utilizes personal influence and relationships with others, rather than the authority of office, to achieve team/organizational objectives and solve needs. Such a leader is empathetic and listens to others’ needs, focusing on motivating and inspiring them to achieve their best potential and contribute their best performances. I shall be a leader who allows the active participation and contribution of others in decision-making, and who takes an interest in their desires, perspectives, and challenges to encourage them to utilize their strengths to improve both themselves and others. In this way, I am confident that I shall have an inspiring influence on them, their performances, and the achievement of team and organizational objectives.
Discuss two favorite counseling theories for a school counselor.
Two favorite counseling theories for a school counselor are Adler’s theory and Ellis’ rational emotive behavior theory. Adler’s theory features the central idea that individuals are social creatures who need to learn to cope competently as members of a community. Mainly, this means that social needs are critical influences of actions, choices, and behaviors of individuals, such that efforts to solve individuals’ problems involve learning to work in cooperation with others. It holds that individuals derive benefits based on efforts to add to the community’s common good. In this context, counseling aims at acquiring an insight into the self and teaching individuals to live effectively in school and other environments. Ellis’ theory holds that psychological problems are outcomes of misconceptions and irrational cognition, which themselves result from interactions with parents, educators, and others. It holds that counseling ought to aim at teaching students to think about their lives in more productive and qualitative ways to break inappropriate and self-destructive responses to interactions with others and adopt positive interpretations and understanding of the world.