School Counselors Matter
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the critical role school counselors play and why their positions should be protected.
Key Takeaways
- Counselors fill essential roles - From college guidance to crisis intervention, counselors handle work that no one else in the building can
- Their positions are often cut first - Budget pressures frequently eliminate counselor positions, shifting their work onto teachers and administrators
Transcript
School counselors are so, so, so important.
And as an administrator, I always appreciated the division of labor that we could have between admin and counselors because counselors can play a role in preventing conflict or in resolving conflict before it escalates to the point of, say, a fight or a harassment situation.
I think counselors really are on the front lines of preventing a lot of the behavior issues that we've been talking about lately with restorative practice.
And of course, it's appropriate for counselors to use restorative practices to try to solve issues before they get big.
But a lot of what I've been saying about restorative practices not working in a school discipline context are on the admin side, right?
When something reaches the admin level because there has been a fight, there has been some sort of major problem between students, that's when it's not appropriate to use restorative practices where students are just kind of working things out because there needs to be a consequence.
And if there's not a consequence, that situation is going to continue to escalate.
So If you have a great counselor, you know a good school counselor is worth their weight in gold.
And I think too often counselor positions don't get funded.
Counselor positions get cut or there maybe is a counselor, but that counselor is just spread way too thin and just not enough counseling time per student.
You know, maybe the school is too big.
So let me know what you're seeing with counselors and let me know.
if there are other roles that you're seeing that are either maybe taking funding away or maybe taking some of the load off of counselors, I'm curious what's out there because I've heard a lot of roles around restorative practices, you know, like some sort of coordinator or facilitator for restorative practices.
And for the same reasons, I think some of those could be good things if they're on the preventative side, right?
If they are intervening with students before anything bad happens and I just want to say one more time I'm not opposed to the use of restorative practices in that sense I'm opposed to the use of restorative practices instead of consequences because again kids are smart they realize when there are no consequences, they can just get away with stuff.
They don't really have any reason to work it out or to exercise self-control and to not get into trouble because getting into trouble is not that bad.
So I think if you are using restorative practices, that's not a terrible thing by itself.
You just have to not be using them in place of real consequences for when something doesn't occur.
Let me know what you think.