Resource 8.
Excerpt from the West Virginia Comprehensive Developmental Guidance and Counseling
Resource Manual, 2004:
COUNSELING THEORY AND THERAPY IN
WEST VIRGINIA SCHOOLS
Although school counselors are qualified professional counselors by virtue of their specialized
certification, traditional therapeutic counseling, which is regularly scheduled and lasts
approximately one hour, is rarely conducted by the school counselor in the school setting due
to other responsibilities related to the National Standards. However, that is not to say that
counseling does not occur, or that therapeutic relationships do not exist in the school setting.
Indeed they do. School counselors are professional counselors in a school setting. Therefore,
their role must stress the importance of a developmental template to organize activities, but it
must be done in a concert with a psychotherapeutic template.
In the school setting COUNSELING is defined as a confidential relationship in which the
counselor conducts sessions with students individually or in small group settings to help them
resolve or cope constructively with their problems and developmental concerns as they relate
to academic, career and personal/social development. Counseling may be in response to a
personal student crisis or support with an ongoing problem. Individual counseling is short,
usually lasting 15 – 30 minutes and often supports school wide efforts to assist a student
toward success. School counselors may use brief/effective counseling techniques to quickly
address student issues to allow a student to return promptly to the classroom to continue the
educational process.
A word of caution . . . Haphazardly selecting techniques without a theoretical rationale can be
harmful to clients and can possibly be unethical. Just simply employing techniques because they
appear to work can be confusing to the client and the counselor.
Students who need intense therapy are referred to appropriate outside resources.
Psychoanalysis, deep therapy, hypnosis, and other advanced counseling techniques are intense
therapeutic techniques and are not practiced by a school counselor in the school setting.
A very significant function of a school counselor is to apply appropriate counseling theories to
address student needs and problems. All school programming is to be research based and the
school counseling program is not exempt. Appropriate counseling theories provide a firm
research base for a school counseling program. A school counselor is continually vigilant about
the application of counseling and human development theory while providing counseling
services, planning and delivering the comprehensive school counseling program, and initiating
systemic change.