Upper School
Counseling Information
Prevention: Accessibility; Educational venues; Consultation
Intervention: Advising/problem solving/supporting; Crisis intervention; Short-term counseling; Assessment and referral
Case Management | Confidentiality | Resources/Links
- Prevention (action occurring prior to direct intervention):
- Accessibility: The Upper School Counselor is available to any student, parent, and/or faculty/staff member concerned about a student. The Upper School Counselor is involved in a variety of formal and informal conversations during the on-going life of the school. These include parent conferences, Dean’s meetings, staffings, consultations with faculty/staff, as well as formal and informal conversations with students. Such conversations are the times when issues general to the Upper School student-body, or specific to an individual student, tend to emerge.
- Consultation with faculty, parents, and students: The Upper School Counselor also has more pointed conversations to deal with general and specific student issues. They can be explorative in nature, but may also be the beginning of an intervention or referral process.
- Educational venues: Forums, class meetings, classroom education, parent nights, AMPs, faculty in-service, and other educational opportunities give the Counselor a chance to disseminate information concerning adolescent and school issues to students/parents, and faculty/staff.
- Sharing resources: The Counselor can make available to students, parents, and faculty/staff pertinent books, web sites, videos, and other materials that speak to adolescent, family, and school-based issues.
- Accessibility: The Upper School Counselor is available to any student, parent, and/or faculty/staff member concerned about a student. The Upper School Counselor is involved in a variety of formal and informal conversations during the on-going life of the school. These include parent conferences, Dean’s meetings, staffings, consultations with faculty/staff, as well as formal and informal conversations with students. Such conversations are the times when issues general to the Upper School student-body, or specific to an individual student, tend to emerge.
- Intervention
- Advising/problem solving/supporting: The Upper School Counselor is identified as an available resource for students on a drop-in or a referred basis. The Counselor encourages informal contact with students, parents, and/or faculty/staff to talk about relevant issues in students’ lives. Examples of these issues are stress, relationships, student-teacher issues, academic concerns, life functioning issues, etc.
- Crisis intervention: Many events create situations of crisis for students and families. Traumatic events such as a death in the family, accidents causing injury or death, suicide or suicidal behavior, and situations arising from sudden or accumulated life events such as mental or physical illness, divorce, or academic failure may trigger a personal or familial crisis.
- Short-term counseling: Schools are not mental health clinics. There are, however, occasions where a short term counseling relationship between a student and the School Counselor is desired and appropriate. This relationship is bound by the rules of confidentiality (see following comment on confidentiality) and may be an end in itself or result in a referral to a professional outside the school. This short-term counseling contact may also be in the form of small group work. Typically, small groups are formed around an issue or problem common to the members of the group. The nature of small counseling groups in school settings is supportive, not therapeutic.
- Assessment and referral: Following a crisis, a short term counseling contact, or a less formal contact, and referral of the student and/or family to an outside professional may be appropriate. The School Counselor makes an assessment of the nature and scope of the relevant issues and offers several contacts for the family and/or student to pursue. Once the contact is made, the School Counselor begins a liaison role within a team consisting of the student, parent, outside professional, and school faculty/staff.
- Advising/problem solving/supporting: The Upper School Counselor is identified as an available resource for students on a drop-in or a referred basis. The Counselor encourages informal contact with students, parents, and/or faculty/staff to talk about relevant issues in students’ lives. Examples of these issues are stress, relationships, student-teacher issues, academic concerns, life functioning issues, etc.
- Case Management: School counseling is a teaming model. The several “stakeholders” are typically the student, parents, administrators, school faculty/staff, outside professionals, and the School Counselor. Once a student is seeing an outside professional (professional mental health counselor, psychologist, medical doctor, psychiatrist, etc.) the role of the School Counselor is typically one of support for the strategies being identified and worked on by the outside professionals, and as a point of communication and coordination of services within the school (often in conjunction with the student’s advisor).
- Confidentiality: The issue of confidentiality is extremely important. The School Counselor is ethically bound to maintain a confidential relationship with students with whom that Counselor has established a formal counseling relationship. The exceptions to this occur in situations where the Counselor feels the student is in danger of hurting himself or herself or someone else, or is a victim of abuse. Other communication must be with the student’s permission. Communication with outside professionals also has to be with the student’s permission (both the School Counselor and outside professional are bound by this confidentiality). All testing and written communication is maintained in a locked file and is only shared with those identified by the student and family.
- Resources/Links
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Crisis Clinic
(206) 461- 3610 -
Teen link
(206) 461-4922
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