Episode 22
Partners in Potential: School Counselors Today
The pivotal role of school counselors in fostering student success is thoroughly examined in this enlightening discussion. Host David Owen engages with Patty DaSilva, the supervisor of school counseling, as they delve into the multifaceted responsibilities of school counselors beyond traditional guidance. They explore how these professionals facilitate academic achievement, career readiness, and personal growth, thereby creating a supportive environment for both students and families. The conversation emphasizes the collaborative nature of counseling, illustrating how counselors unite parents, educators, and community members to aid students in realizing their potential. Through this dialogue, we gain invaluable insights into the essential contributions of school counselors in shaping the educational journey of students.
Guest: Patty DaSilva, Supervisor of School Counselors
Links referenced in this episode:
Useful links from the podcast:
Podcast Home:
https://the-inside-scoop.captivate.fm/
Cobb Schools on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/@TheRealCobbSchools
Give us a review:
https://www.podchaser.com/TheInsideScoop
Here's the link to let us know what you'd like to hear:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VYTRCLG
Cobb Sports Podcast:
https://cobb-sports.captivate.fm/episodes
The Cobb County School District:
https://www.cobbk12.org
Takeaways:
- School counselors play a multifaceted role in promoting academic achievement and personal growth.
- The collaborative approach of school counselors involves engaging parents, teachers, and community members.
- Counselors utilize comprehensive programs that include data-driven assessments to support student success.
- Career readiness is a significant focus, guiding students in exploring various post-secondary options.
- Crisis counseling is a vital aspect of their responsibilities, offering support during traumatic events.
- Effective communication between parents and counselors is essential for maximizing student support and resources.
Transcript
How school counselors support your student success is the topic for today's edition of the Inside Scoop.
Speaker A:Hello and welcome back to the Inside Scoop.
Speaker A:I'm David Owen.
Speaker A:Each weekly episode we produce is intended to provide you with some insights that will help your student reach their greatest level of success.
Speaker A:Today is no exception.
Speaker A:They used to be known as guidance counselors back in the day, but their roles have grown substantially since then.
Speaker A:Cobb's supervisor of school counseling, Patty Da Silva, joins us today to tell us more about school counselors.
Speaker A:Not guidance counselors.
Speaker A:School counselors.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker B:I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker A:Well, and you've been on the podcast a few times before.
Speaker A:We always.
Speaker A:You guys cover so much territory that you're going to get a frequent flyer card or something.
Speaker A:I gotta get something for you.
Speaker A:Tell us a little more about what's expected of school counselors in Cobb schools.
Speaker B:School counselors, their role, it's really multifaceted.
Speaker B:It's not just the guidance that we knew before.
Speaker B:That's a piece of it, but it is just a piece of it.
Speaker B:So school counselors, we typically operate under three core areas.
Speaker B:We have academic achievement, college and career readiness, and then personal growth, all of those counseling things that parents, students, anyone who hears the word counseling knows it to be about.
Speaker A:You mentioned academic support.
Speaker A:Tell us more about that angle of school counseling.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:So academic support can come from so many different areas.
Speaker B:It could be helping students set achievable goals and then meet their goals.
Speaker B:There is that advisement piece, the guidance piece, which is a really strong component, especially in Cobb County.
Speaker B:And then also study habits, managing time effectively, organization, test prep.
Speaker B:I mean, there's so many different components of how students need to be prepared academically and how school counselors in the building can help support, setting and achieving their academic goals.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Do school counselors help in the accountability side of the academics, or is that more of a.
Speaker A:We're seeing some things.
Speaker A:Let me jump in there and give you some pointers like you just highlighted.
Speaker B:I mean, school counselors are collaborators, and it's because they have to bring together all of the different pieces in order to help students reach their goals.
Speaker B:Parents have to be a part of the conversation.
Speaker B:Teachers, administrators, community members, like everybody is a piece of.
Speaker B:And school counselors are the ones typically who bring all those parties together to help the school as a whole and students specifically to set and reach their individual goals.
Speaker A:So as cheesy as it sounds, it really is a team of support for the student it really is.
Speaker B:It has to be.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, you mentioned also the college and career readiness angle of supporting students.
Speaker A:Tell us more about what.
Speaker A:What that entails.
Speaker A:It seems like it might be a little bit treacherous because students generally don't automatically know, do I want to go to college?
Speaker A:Is college on the horizon for me, or is a career a better choice for me?
Speaker A:How do you guys interact with them on that?
Speaker B:So now we're kind of focused.
Speaker B:And this might sound a little talk about treacherous.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:A lot of the terminology you will hear now is career readiness, but that's because there's so many paths to take to get to a career.
Speaker B:And we want to make sure students are aware of all of those different options that are available to them, one of them being college.
Speaker B:But we do have so many different resources that school counselors use to support students with this.
Speaker B:They might do interest inventories, assessments where they can see who they are as a person and how that might relate to a future career.
Speaker A:Like as YouScience.
Speaker A:One of those.
Speaker B:YouScience is one.
Speaker B:Naviance has several.
Speaker B:There are quite a few different programs and resources that counselors use to help students.
Speaker A:Students to try and figure themselves out.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because it's a combination of you need to look at your interests, but also combined with your abilities and putting those pieces together to really help you find a career that suits both.
Speaker B:Because you can't just be interested in something in order to make a success of it.
Speaker B:The example I always give is say you love singing, right?
Speaker B:Like it's your passion.
Speaker B:You love singing.
Speaker A:Are you about to sing?
Speaker B:No, no.
Speaker B:Although I do love singing.
Speaker B:But you might be tone deaf.
Speaker B:So even though you love singing, if you're not good at it, maybe that's not a great career fit for you.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:I think I've heard somebody doing that once thinking they were at the top of their class for singing, and they actually were not.
Speaker B:So it's helping students to find the combination of both so that not only are they going to be good at what they do, but they'll enjoy doing it as well.
Speaker B:And there's so many different program to do that.
Speaker B:We also help them understand their strengths because there's the interest, their abilities, and then their strengths.
Speaker B:And it's combining all that together.
Speaker B:And we have great assessments that do that.
Speaker B:And even starting in like pre K and kindergarten, they start to open the door to careers.
Speaker B:Pre K, Pre Kardon.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Well, I guess if a child is sitting there doing surgery on a doll or something, I mean, how do you.
Speaker A:How does that Work that's so early in their little lives.
Speaker A:How can that.
Speaker B:A lot of times it's just kind of broadening their horizons because younger students, the only careers that they are going to want to be are ones that they've seen or ones that their families are a part of.
Speaker B:And that's not a terrible thing.
Speaker B:But you think about how many different careers are out there, or even if you take just like the helping profession and how many different facets there are to the helping profession, it's just helping to broaden their horizons in the same way that perhaps college fairs do for high school students, that it's not just three different colleges that they've heard of before that their family's been to, but broadening their horizons so that they see there's so many options out there and there might be something close to what they're interested in, but just a slightly different path.
Speaker B:Counselors help them to just kind of navigate those different waters and see how they can zero in on what their future is going to lead to and what their goals are.
Speaker A:That's interesting because you mentioned at the high school level we're doing all of this informative stuff to help students understand what the available options are.
Speaker A:But even as young as pre K and kindergarten, I guess if we didn't do that sort of thing, we'd end up with just a society full of police officers and firefighters and princesses, which.
Speaker B:Wouldn'T be a terrible thing.
Speaker B:But you know, there's other jobs, especially with how the world is expanding with technology, letting them see just all the options available to them and, you know, testing out their abilities based on those different options available.
Speaker B:It just gives them a way to individualize their goals and their passions and their skills and really combine all of those together to have hopefully a very fulfilling career after they've left us in Cobb.
Speaker A:So when you've got students that are in pre K or kindergarten, you might be able to see things that a parent overlooks.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I mean, as a counselor, a school counselor, you would be able to say, hey, have you noticed how detailed they are in coloring or playing with an object?
Speaker A:That might be entree for looking at jobs that are very detail oriented.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:And we can add to that whole picture of the student.
Speaker B:And I mean, parents at home generally don't have access to the kinds of programs that are available at the schools.
Speaker B:So we can provide some of that information to the adults, to the families at home, and to say, have you ever noticed that your student enjoys this, but also does this?
Speaker B:And I'm a really big proponent of family school connection and having those conversations.
Speaker B:And I love providing families with topics to talk about at dinner.
Speaker B:And so that was a really big piece of what some of the school counselors were doing in the past year or so was trying to help families with talk about this because it's our passion and it's our skill to think about their futures and how what they're doing now aligns with that.
Speaker B:But families might not know how to have that conversation.
Speaker B:And so a school counselor can definitely help to bridge that and to help keep that conversation going and keep the broadening of the horizons even when the students are at home and the families seem to get pretty excited about it too.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I would also think that in families, especially larger families, as a veteran parent, sometimes it's helpful to have somebody from the outside point out opportunities when, you know, maybe we're struggling to survive daily.
Speaker A:Opportunities that can actually give some focus to conversations like that.
Speaker A:That's a great idea.
Speaker B:And I can tell you as a newer parent, as opposed to your veteran parent, I love hearing from the school what my child is doing and what he's working on and where he stands out and kind of things that maybe we can still encourage at home.
Speaker B:And I think that's a really great part to showing like it is a holistic team approach to all pieces and.
Speaker A:Kind of reinforce that strength the child has here or there or whatnot.
Speaker A:So that's kind of a happy side of your job.
Speaker A:But unfortunately, there are times when school counselors are called on for very personal, I guess, emotional things.
Speaker A:Recently, not too long ago, there was a horrible incident, a shooting at school in Barrow County, I believe it was.
Speaker A:And you guys from Cobb County, I remember the superintendent saying this, you guys went over to help because it was just so broad.
Speaker B:I mean, we're helpers.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you almost can't help.
Speaker A:I mean, can't help helping is the way to put that.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:So when it comes to, I guess you'd categorize that as personal growth or actually survival.
Speaker A:Personal survival skills.
Speaker A:What are some examples?
Speaker A:Can you share some examples of how crisis counseling being a part of your job has made a difference in students lives?
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:And that section, that component of school counseling, that personal, it's so big and there's so many different things that can happen and it can be everyday things like conflict with a friend.
Speaker B:And so a counselor can help a stud learn how to communicate better.
Speaker B:It could be just like issues with the family and maybe again, still helping with communication there.
Speaker B:But Then it could swing all the way to the other side where trauma occurs, because it does and it can.
Speaker B:And a counselor can provide just that safe space where a student can express their emotions and they can try to just basically process through things, get it out of their system so that they can hopefully return to class and be able to learn.
Speaker B:And then there's those community wide and those school wide events that really bring those large crises home.
Speaker B:And school counselors are also a really big part of that response.
Speaker B:And helping a school to not only attend to the needs of the students and of the staff, but also to help again, bring it back to.
Speaker B:Let's try to put a going back to school and let's try to get back into our routine because routine is actually really supportive of how to respond to crisis.
Speaker B:So not only are there some individual crises at the school, there might be the death of a parent or a sibling or something where a counselor can work one on one with a student.
Speaker B:Sometimes there's the loss of a student or of a staff member at the school and that takes on a larger role that the counselors can coordinate a response to really just support the whole school as a one.
Speaker B:And then also we have district support to go in and help with the schools if they need help with their response, if it's a large crisis or if it's a large, you know, response because of a student death or a staff death.
Speaker B:So it's an unfortunate part of our job, but it's really beautiful to see people come together and for school counselors to show that even in the darkest times that, you know, we're still going to support you and we're still going to be here for you.
Speaker B:And I do think that that has a huge impact on students being able to come to school and to know they have this safe space where they can learn and where they can grow and they can, you know, reach their goals and be successful.
Speaker A:So it's the full gamut.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:I mean, that's from the lowest lows.
Speaker B:To the highest highs, right?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And that emotional component affects whether they are physically able to absorb information and knowledge and learn, right?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:So how do you, I mean, a lot of what you guys do is very ambiguous, I guess is the word.
Speaker A:It's a very, it's not very tangible.
Speaker A:And here are the facts sometimes.
Speaker A:So how do you know that you guys are doing a good job?
Speaker B:So this is the other fun part of why I love school counselors.
Speaker B:So they are your emotional support.
Speaker B:They are there for the soft stuff.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But Also in Cobb county, we encourage every school to implement a comprehensive school counseling program.
Speaker B:And all of those comprehensive school counseling programs are data driven.
Speaker B:So counselors are actually well versed, and they do data very well.
Speaker B:Everything from how they plan out their year.
Speaker B:Everything's usually planned out ahead of time.
Speaker B:Most things, you can't plan everything, I.
Speaker A:Suppose, especially in the crisis area, right?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:But planning out classroom lessons, small groups, advisements, which is a really strong component here in Cobb County.
Speaker B:But then also they do reports, so they'll do a closing the gap report that shows the kinds of interventions that counselors can run to really help to note achievement gaps or note attendance gaps and what kind of interventions counselors can employ to help close those gaps.
Speaker B:And so they do a results report.
Speaker B:Every school generally does a results report at the end of the year to kind of identify their school counseling program through data.
Speaker B:And then they also do a lot of that qualitative data where they solicit information from.
Speaker B:They have advisory councils.
Speaker B:Every one of our school has a school counseling advisory council.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Where they specifically focused on school counseling.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Where parents, community members, students all come together and they showcase what their plans are, what they're doing.
Speaker B:They do it twice a year, and they look for feedback.
Speaker B:You know, are there any parts we're missing?
Speaker B:Is there anything we should look to add?
Speaker B:And then in the spring, they bring that council back together and they share their results and their data to say, here's what we talked about in the fall, and here's how we did with it, good, bad, or otherwise, whether we met our goals or not.
Speaker B:And so that supplemental data, that feedback, the needs assessment, those are also really important components and data that counselors collect in order to improve and continue their programs each year.
Speaker A:So there's always.
Speaker A:Someone will always complain there's too much paperwork, I'm sure, but.
Speaker A:And paperwork's a necessity.
Speaker A:But it sounds like you guys have put together a feedback method that is helpful as opposed to just checking boxes and.
Speaker A:Oh, this has taken me hours to do.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And the entire comprehensive model is.
Speaker B:It's a lot when you look at it today.
Speaker A:It's comprehensive.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:As it should be.
Speaker B:But I do think it helps to answer this question because I don't think many people know how much or really, I guess, the breadth of what counselors do.
Speaker B:It's not just talking to kids when they're having a bad day, and it's not just going into the classroom to do lessons or doing small groups.
Speaker B:There is this range of implementation pieces that school counselors provide to their schools, their students, their families, and when they put it on paper, it's beautiful.
Speaker B:And in Cobb, we actually are the first in Georgia that we have created and are in our second year of doing a certification for.
Speaker B:When school counseling programs are running a truly comprehensive model program, they can apply for certification and they can show to their school and to the district that they are running a truly comprehensive program.
Speaker A:Something that's documented as consistent and high quality, I'm assuming.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:That's amazing.
Speaker A:Once again, Cobb steps up.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:So what advice would you give parents who are listening or watching on ways that they can best utilize the services available through school counselors?
Speaker B:I think the first thing I would suggest is see what they're doing.
Speaker B:Because we have such strong school counseling programs in Cobb county, they probably already have so many events scheduled.
Speaker B:Anything from a college fair or a career fair or college and career fair.
Speaker B:They might have parent workshops.
Speaker B:They might have classroom lessons already showing.
Speaker B:They might have advisement in the books.
Speaker B:There's so many events that they likely already have planned that families might not be aware of.
Speaker B:So the first thing I would suggest is visit their website or on ctls or however the counselors send out information through a newsletter.
Speaker B:Make sure you're a part of that, and make sure you're receiving the information that the counseling office has to send out.
Speaker A:Stay in the loop.
Speaker B:Stay in the loop.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Communications number one.
Speaker B:But then also, if there is a concern, if they're seeing a change in their students or if they have a question about how counselors address insert topic here.
Speaker B:Reach out to the counselor and ask that question, because they might already have something planned.
Speaker B:Small groups.
Speaker B:A lot of times the counselors will see and hear from teachers or hear from administration, different issues happening at the school.
Speaker B:So they might bring a group of students together to try to help improve their attitude, skills, and knowledge, to just do better with whatever that issue is.
Speaker B:If it's attendance or if it's behavior or if it's academics, there might already be something in play and planned, and the parents can ask, can my child be a part of that?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But I would say the first step is get to know them, see what they're doing, find out what their plans are already in action.
Speaker A:So make sure that channel of communication.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:There's no pushback, because a lot of times you're right.
Speaker A:Earlier, you mentioned school counselors giving information about something great going on in the student's life at school.
Speaker A:But all too often, in some cases, it's about what your child did wrong, they have to suffer this consequence as a result.
Speaker A:So bottom line, just make sure that channel of communication is open so that there's a comfort level for making both directions go.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And for example, 8th through 11th grade, there are advisement activities in place.
Speaker B:So if families are not aware that that's happening, it might be that they, I don't know, maybe their email's wrong or something.
Speaker B:But there's advisement activities in place where families are invited to be a part of that.
Speaker B:Students are a part of it, but families are invited to be a part of it too, like creating their individualized graduation plan.
Speaker B:That's a big part of middle and high school that not only do we encourage families, we really want families to be a part of it.
Speaker B:And programming really for all school counselors, Pre K through 12 is designed for all students.
Speaker B:It is designed to meet the needs again, the academic, college and career and the personal needs of all students.
Speaker B:There is some reactive pieces where counselors will always meet whatever needs come up, but there are already plans in place of how they're working to meet the needs of their school, community and their students.
Speaker B:And so parents working to be a part of that is always going to be welcomed by school counselors.
Speaker A:Well, that is awesome.
Speaker A:Well, it's clear that school counselors are kept plenty busy, not just sitting by a catalog of universities to apply for.
Speaker A:But man, you guys do such a great job, deal of work as well as a great quality of work.
Speaker A:So thank you so much for leading that charge on behalf of our students.
Speaker A:Happy to if this podcast has helped you better understand the support school counselors offer your student, please give us a Like subscribe and click that notification bell so you'll know when a new episode is released.
Speaker A:Also, let a friend know so their student can reach their fullest potential.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening to the Inside Scoop, a podcast produced by the Cobb County School.
