5 Ways School Counsellors Can Make an Impact on Early Learning
Children, like adults, have significant issues they deal with in life. They face violence, abuse, discrimination, and other vices that can significantly affect them. Failure to address such issues will likely lead to adaptive behaviors such as aggression, drug abuse in adulthood, isolation, withdrawal, etc. It is, therefore, the role of schools, with the help of school counselors, to address these issues early.
School counselors should focus on helping children cultivate positive behaviors, create positive societies in the future, and live a positive life. Equally, the counselor should act as a guardian with whom children can share their thoughts, challenges and gain the necessary help. To succeed in all these roles, school counselors can use the following tips to be great at their jobs and make some impact in the kids’ lives.
Contents
1. Stakeholders Indulgence
Handling kids can be a challenge, especially if you approach it alone. Some may not feel free to communicate anything they go through in life; hence you need help from other stakeholders. These stakeholders should include teachers, parents, child services, law enforcement, and other relevant agencies.
Stakeholder inclusion can help in various ways. Child services and law enforcement can help address domestic violence, child abuse, and negligence in case of ever-absent parents. Teachers and parents can help understand the kids since they often interact with them. Teachers can help you understand their character traits, while parents can help you understand unique challenges such as illnesses.
Through stakeholder collaboration, an elementary school counselor can develop various programs and interventions to help the children cope with life. This includes mental health intervention services, eliminating triggers such as violence, and teaching coping skills.
A counselor should try to analyze every kid to ensure personalized help intervention. The greatest focus should be on the kids who appear odd regarding behavior, class performance, school attendance, etc.
2. Awareness Sessions
Societies are currently filled with toxic behaviors and issues likely to affect children negatively. Parents and other adults can foster toxic behaviors such as racism, gun violence, and discrimination which is not good for children. They learn from adults and are likely to copy these behaviors and manifest them in school or adulthood.
A partnership with guidance and a counselor should create a positive environment free form such vices. Since schools are diverse institutions, the counselor can teach children to love each other despite gender, racial, and color differences. Through such interventions, you help instill behaviors that make society safer in the future.
Elementary school counseling should also focus on bullying in and out of school. Bullying can negatively affect the bullied and can also tell a lot about the aggressor. Cases of bullying should be best addressed through the guidance and counseling department to ensure the counselor understands the students.
Besides one on one anti-bullying sessions, you can also organize awareness sessions where you speak to students. Such sessions should focus on building them into future patriots and those who can make societies safe. Therefore, discuss gender, color, racial equality, love, unity, and collaboration. Also, address issues of drugs early by teaching abstinence and avoiding drugs, including alcohol.
3. Teaching Critical Skills
Children deal with issues such as bullying, hate, and domestic violence that can affect them significantly. These issues can lead to mental health challenges, aggressive behaviors, and anti-social behaviors when not addressed. Kids do not have to deal with all that burden; hence schools can save them by appointing a counselor to help.
Besides the normal counseling sessions, a counselor can also focus on teaching them key skills to help them cope. These skills should be about problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication. While teaching these skills, ensure they learn about awareness of their situation and seek help.
An effective way to do so is to teach them how to express their feelings through drawing and submit to their teacher. Talk to the teachers to take every submission seriously, follow up, and allow the students to interpret what they feel based on what they have drawn. Simple essays can also be effective, especially for students who are shy and do not love talking.
As part of their assignments and class projects, counselors should advise teachers to ask students to write about their family experiences and describe any other challenges they face in society. Such awareness projects should be the best and most effective communication tool for children facing various challenges.
4. Establish Relationships with the Students
Kids from certain backgrounds may have challenges communicating and associating with others. Such kids tend to be silent, lonely, and isolated from other students. They are also vulnerable to bullying from other students who deem them weak. Your role as a counselor is to ensure they find peace, establish friendships and have someone they can talk to.
Children from families with domestic violence, abuse, or absent parents will likely suffer from these behaviors. A counselor should constantly observe the students and select those that need help. For such students, help can be activities such as teaching them awareness skills to help them create relationships with other students.
You are also their guardian; hence you need to establish a cordial relationship to enable them to share their challenges. Afterward, you should implement various intervention measures to help them feel loved and accepted. You can talk to parents, child services, law enforcement, and other relevant organizations.
5. Recommend Reading Materials
Though not part of the teaching fraternity, school counselors can be integral in selecting reading and study materials. They can help teachers select the right books for skills development and academic purposes.
School districts select key curriculum books to help students gain academic skills but also allow teachers the freedom to select additional books for the kids. That is where the counselor comes in; they can help select books suitable to help children develop other skills not taught in class.
Whenever a school hires guidance and counselor, it is important to collaborate with them to select extra academic materials to teach awareness and other life skills. It is their role to recommend books to teach kids key skills such as love, diversity, equality, and problem-solving.
Through their collaboration with teachers, they can also design activities to teach children other essential skills and experiences in life. Counselors can modify class activities and games to make them impactful and meaningful.
Conclusion
A school counselor is integral in shaping kids’ behaviors early, helping them develop desirable behaviors. They can do so by teaching the students key skills, recommending reading materials, and creating a cordial relationship with them. To succeed in their jobs, they must partner with all the relevant stakeholders needed for different duties.