Running head: LEADER, COLLABORATOR, ADVOCATOR
The Ideal Role of a School Counselor: Leader, Collaborator, Advocator
Elise Darling Kechele
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Abstract
From day one on the job, counselors need to establish a stable, warm, and trusting
relationship with their students. By doing this, they can serve as a leader within their
school. A leader facilitates trusting relationships, which in turn leads to collaboration
between the school counselor and other members of the school. A counselor that is in
collaboration with other members of the school is able to more strongly advocate for
systematic change and needs of individual students. An ideal school counselor role is
complex because a counselor must flow each day from being a leader, to a collaborator,
to an advocate and then back to being in a leadership role. It is an always-evolving circle.
The ideal school counselor is flexible and very well versed in each of these high priority
roles, and is able to prioritize different roles depending on the needs of the day in their
school.
Keywords: Leadership, Collaboration, Advocacy
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The Ideal Role of a School Counselor: Leader, Collaborator, Advocator
The role of a school counselor depends on what is happening in a school on any
given day. Furthermore, the role of a school counselor is different across schools. Each
school and students within that school, have their own set of unique needs that a
professional school counselor can address. The American School Counselor Association
(ASCA) defines the role of a school counselor as, “Professional school counselors create
a mission statement supporting the school’s mission and collaborate with other
individuals and organizations to promote all students’ academic, career and
personal/social development” (ASCA, 2012). I believe that this definition encompasses
two key qualities of a leader: facilitating collaboration and advocating for students in
their school. I understand that the school counselor plays all three of these roles (leader,
collaborator, advocator) and many more each day within a school. One role is not more
important or less important than the other. Taking the initiative in being a leader in the
school, collaborating with teachers, parents and administrators as well as advocating for
the needs of a student is something that a school counselor accomplishes each day. An
ideal counselor role is complex because they must flow between each role every day. It is
a never ending evolving circle as a school counselor transforms from being a leader, to a
collaborator, to an advocate and back to being in a leadership role. The amount of time
spent on each role; leadership, collaboration and advocacy may change by the demands
of any given day.
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School counselors play an inherent leadership role in their school setting. In my
past experiences, a leader of the school is someone who is ambitious, competent and has
a vision and set of goals for how the school can best support its students in their learning
and personal growth. This leader can be anyone from a student, to an administrator or
especially the school counselor. Students are sponges that soak up a lot of information
during a school day. Students soak up the behaviors of their peers, and hopefully some of
the behaviors of their teachers and counselors. As leaders of the schools, school
counselors, administrators and teachers are all role models for their students and should
exhibit leadership quality behaviors to model for the students. I personally learned a lot
of my good behaviors from mirroring those behaviors of the people that surrounded me
while growing up. I hope that if counselors can demonstrate quality leadership behaviors
that the students watching will be able to absorb and mirror those qualities in their own
lives. Exhibiting the skills of being a strong, ethical leader, collaborator and advocate for
injustice in the schools will hopefully be absorbed by the students we work with every
day to create students who will become the next generation of leaders, collaborators and
advocates.
A definition of leadership I align with is by Northouse, which states; “Leadership
is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common
goal” (Northouse, 2007). This definition of leadership truly expresses how the leadership
of a school counselor facilitates collaboration between individuals of that school and how
that leading of collaborations is essential for development and change to occur in the
school.
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No matter what school counselors are working on during their day at school, they
are in a leadership role within that context simply because of their authority in that
school. According to ASCA, there are four types of leadership qualities that a school
counselor should encompass in their job: Structural Leadership, Human Resource
Leadership, Political Leadership, and Symbolic Leadership (ASCA, 2012). As
counselors are in a leadership role in all these four contexts within a school, they have
power to influence their co-leaders to guide them to collaborate for the success of all
students. Leadership is very important to a counselor’s role because if a counselor is a
good leader, then they are even more able to influence many positive changes for a
school. This influence a school counselor has, as an effective leader is best described by
Sink, “Effective leaders foster a mutually acceptable organizational vision and attempt to
create an environment where all colleagues want to contribute to the tasks at hand.”
(Sink, 2009). Sink is stating that because the counselor does such a great job of fostering
an environment where development and change can occur then others within the school
will follow suit. An example where school counselors put themselves in a leadership
position and generated responsiveness in others is demonstrated clearly within the Belser,
Morris and Hasselbeck paper outlining the issues of childhood obesity. The authors
demonstrate that the vision of one leader motivated others such as teachers, lunchroom
helpers and physical education (PE) teachers to join together to better the overall health
of the students (Belser, Morris and Hasselbeck, 2012).
Another way to view the influence of a leadership role is described in a research
brief by Andrew Coleman. He dove into and critiqued a sparsely researched topic
described as “system leadership”. System leadership is described as a “means through
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which the most successful school leaders support their peers in increasing the
effectiveness of their schools, which also shares a focus on improving outcomes for
children” (Coleman, 2011). The idea conceptualizes school leadership as a group rather
than individual effort and explains that teams rather than individuals lead the most
effective schools. In my opinion leading a school as part of a team has stronger and
longer lasting effects of greater change because there is support from the team members
all working together for the same goal.
If we incorporate ASCA’s styles of leadership, Northouse’s definition of
leadership and Coleman’s idea of a system leadership, it appears that leadership has many
different faces. Of note is that there is not nearly enough research on the direct impact of
a school counselor’s leadership on improving students’ abilities, and making changes in
the school. I believe that a counselor’s leadership contributions are shown more clearly
through their collaborations with team members and their efforts in advocating for
students.
Collaboration is an imperative part of a school counselor’s role. There have been
ample amounts of research which has demonstrated that poverty, family distress, and
other conditions outside of schools affect student achievement (Steen & Noguera, 2010).
It is unrealistic to expect school counselors to tackle the mound of issues outside the
world of school, and the problems within a school. In my opinion the issue is that
problems such like these; poverty and family distress are brought into the school making
the job of the school counselor more complicated and clear as mud. By collaborating with
teachers, administrators and parents, it is remarkable how much a school counselor and
their collaborators can change the life of a student.
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School counselors should use school-family-community partnerships to create a
positive learning environment for all students. According to the Strengths Based School
Counseling framework, counselors can use these positive learning environments to foster
youth development (Galassi & Akos, 2007). A survey study of practicing school
counselors conducted by Dr. Griffin, and Dr. Steen of the University of North Carolina,
showed that only 42% of the 205 school counselors surveyed actually were involved in
school-family-community partnerships, even though over 50% of the counselors agreed
that school-family-community partnership was very important (Griffin & Steen, 2010). It
as appears that many school counselors are not utilizing all the resources available to
them. If more school counselors were able to create partnerships with other leaders in
their school then more students would have a greater support network to rely upon to
guide them through the troubles of school. The article further collected comments about
collaborations of school-family-community partnerships and their outcomes. For
example:
“One of the main focuses for my school district was as a liaison between families
and schools because of the language barrier of parents (99% of parents do not speak
English, all Spanish speakers). Therefore, I am very involved in making this happen.
I coordinated and organized all schools’ ESL parents meetings every 2 months,
bringing in Spanish-speaking speakers to talk with parents. I sat on the Ready
Schools and Dropout Prevention committees as a representative for ESL studentsboth committees had large community involvement. I am getting ready to work with
a local community counseling and education agency to teach parent-skills classes to
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parents in Spanish—my initiative out of what I have this year with parents and
students. ” (Griffin & Steen, 2010).
This example demonstrates how collaboration between family and school makes a
comprehensive support network for these English second language (ESL) students and is
helping the students to achieve at their highest level and help them to stay in school rather
than drop out (Griffin & Steen, 2010).
As described earlier, Belsar et al., (2012) writes about the rapidly increasing
problem of childhood obesity. The health of the students is of concern because
overweight children are affected more than just physically, but mentally, and emotionally
as well (Belser et al., 2012). The role of a counselor in combating childhood obesity
should be to work in collaboration with parents, teachers, physical education (PE)
teachers, and community members to bring in speakers to provide support, information
and assistance in becoming a healthier student and teaching kids about a wholesome
healthy lifestyle.
By collaborating with community members, the school counselor can also be an
advocate for change. Since students spend most of their day and consume a few of their
meals at school, there is an opportunity to make systematic changes such as healthier
food in the cafeteria and more physical activity in PE class (Belser et al., 2012). As an
advocate, the school counselor can fight for healthier foods in the cafeteria because
students deserve access to healthy food and might not be getting enough healthy food at
home. On top of advocating for healthy food in the cafeteria, the counselor can also be an
advocate for the requirement of PE classes throughout a child’s educational career. It is
my personal belief and hope that the advocacy of a school counselor can bring about
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change by presenting the issues of childhood obesity and data about its effects on
children to the school bored and administrators. By changing food in the cafeteria,
requiring students to attend a PE class, and teaching students about a healthy lifestyle and
good eating habits the children’s knowledge about living a healthy lifestyle is drastically
increased and subsequently them using the information will alter their lifestyle.
In collaboration with the data manager, teachers and administrators, school
counselors can and should access school data (ASCA, 2012) to determine which students
need more attention and what groups of students are in need of more help. Once the
school counselor is in collaboration with teachers, data managers and administrators they
are in a much better position to be an advocate for students who need the most help. For
example, one group of students that truly need to be advocated for, especially in a high
school setting, is the LGBT community. About 85% of the students in the LGBT
community reported being verbally harassed and about half of those students were also
physically assaulted. Sixty-one percent of LGBT students report feeling unsafe in school
(Bidell, 2011), which will inevitably diminish a person’s livelihood when they are being
harassed. One thing that counselors have done to promote growth and acceptance for
members of this community is to form an advocacy group called a gay-straight alliance
(GSA). Creating a community for these children is important because it is most likely
they don’t have a fully accepting community at home as well as having a rough time at
school. A GSA does wonders for these students and helps students feel comfortable being
themselves. Having a sense of community empowers students to be their best and boosts
their academic and social success which in turn leads to fewer instances of verbal
harassment, physical assault and skipped classes (Bidell, 2011). The empowerment of
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LGBT students encourages them to make it to college, which makes a huge impact on
their lives and in the lives of the school (Bidell, 2011).
In conclusion, I believe that school counselors need to continuously be in a
leadership role so they are able to more effectively collaborate to build warm, fun and
stable environments for students to learn and be advocates for students. There are a
number of pivotal roles that a school counselor plays on a daily basis and depending on
the school, the counselor should weigh the demands of each of those roles and focus on
one role more than the others. The important role a school counselor plays within a
school is that of a leader, a collaborator, and an advocate. The three roles are not
separable, and a school counselor’s task is to incorporate each of these roles and perform
all of them each day according to the current or immediate needs of their school and
students.
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References:
American School Counselor Association (2012). The ASCA National Model: A
Framework for School Counseling Programs, Third Edition. Alexandria, VA:
Author.
Belser, C.T., Morris, J.A., Hasselbeck, J.M. (2012). A Call to Action: Addressing the
Childhood Obesity Epidemic Through Comprehensive School Counseling
Programs. Journal of School Counseling, 10(23).
Bidell, M. P. (2011). School Counselors and Social Justice Advocacy for Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Students. Journal Of School Counseling,
9(10), 22.
Coleman, A. (2011). Towards a Blended Model of Leadership for School-Based
Collaborations. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 39(3),
296-316.
Galassi, J.P., & Akos, P. (2007). Strengths-Based School Counseling Promoting Student
Development and Achievement. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis
Group.
Griffin, D., & Steen, S. (2010). School-Family-Community Partnerships: Applying
Epstein's Theory of the Six Types of Involvement to School Counselor Practice.
Professional School Counseling, 13,218-226.
Northouse, G. (2007). Leadership theory and practice. (3rd ed.) Thousand Oak, London:
New Delhe, Sage Publications Inc.
Sink, C. A. (2009). School Counselors as Accountability Leaders: Another Call for
Action. Professional School Counseling, 13(2), 68-74.
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Steen, S., & Noguera, P. A. (2010). A broader and bolder approach to school reform:
Expanded partnership roles for school counselors. Journal of School Counseling,
14(1).