School counselors have a responsibility to complete numerous tasks to help students graduate. They assist schoolers in making decisions that affect the academic and personal lives of the students. In recent years, school counselors have been actively adopting evidence-based school counseling that includes Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Models. EBP models are three-step plans for teachers and counselors to realize students’ potential. Those three steps are identifying needs through gathered data, implementing research-based practices and interventions, analyze the efficacy of implemented strategies (2018, Zyromski et al.). Moreover, the fundamental prongs of school counselors in choosing practices for intervention are considering students’ personal identities and social contexts of their lives (2018, Zyromski et al.). Therefore, school counselors using EBP are highly engaged with and influence every student’s life.
Working at school enables me to realize my potential within the EBP frame. My main areas of growth are communication and resolving conflict skills. A school is a place where people from different generations gather to receive or provide education. Hence, there might always appear to be a conflict between students and teachers, teachers, or students. My job as a counselor is to resolve those conflicts and effectively communicate with every part of the school. My strengths within evidence-based counseling are analysis and contextual thinking. Both skills are necessary to successfully implement EBP in school counseling, so implementing EBP interventions for me might not be challenging.
The site placement of my internship is a high school with working days from Monday to Friday. There are seven professional school counselors who I work with through the first half of the week. My responsibilities include individually helping students in creating their academic plans for graduation, making schedules for the new students and providing support for students with emotional needs. On the last working day, I also help students register for online courses and work with the safety coordinator. All responsibilities are implemented using EBP and hence are more effective than traditional counseling methods. One learning objective number one for this internship is gaining experience in working with school children, which can later enable me to comprehend the context of students’ different social backgrounds. Another goal is to learn to search for intervention strategies validated by studies and scientific proof.
Reference
Zyromski et al., (2018). Evidence-based school counseling. Professional School Counseling, 21(1), 1–12.