School Counselors are Chalkboard Champions, Too

This week, while I was absorbed in volunteer work for my school's Scholarship Committee, I was reminded once again of how amazing our school counselors are. Day in and day out, these dedicated professionals labor tirelessly to help ensure the academic success, personal achievement, and emotional well-being of our kids. Their commitment to the success of each student starts with their very first interaction with students through their eighth grade outreach programs, and continues with assisting the freshmen with their graduation requirements plans, one-on-one meetings with English-language learners, counseling students who are failing classes, helping students who are lacking credits with strategies for credit recovery, and making sure seniors are on track to graduate. In between all this heavy-duty work, counselors help students find scholarships to fund their post-graduation education programs, write letters of recommendation, judge senior projects, and attend IEP meetings. And as if all that wasn't enough, they also organize small group counseling sessions to help students deal with such issues as bullying, smoking-cessation, teen parenting, or bereavement. When the inevitable quarrels between students arise, they serve as competent conflict resolution facilitators, and they have even been known to mediate the occasional dispute between a student and a teacher. And then, just to top it all off, if---God forbid---some tragedy such as a fatal traffic accident or a suicide strikes, school counselors quickly mobilize into a highly-effective crisis management team. Phenomenal, aren't they? Chalkboard champions, in the truest sense of the word.