Shawn Bryant-Addo & Amy Huerta, Guidance Counselors
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Goal of the Counseling Program
Counselor's Corner
Your school counselor is professionally trained to help your child acquire the skills and information he/she needs to succeed.- Help all students to achieve
- Encourage students to accept academic challenges
- Supports students in their efforts to meet challenges
- Advocate for students with teachers
- Provide emotional and tangible support for students
- Make referrals as needed
Your School Counselor:
- Performs individual and small group counseling session
- Conducts classroom guidance lessons
- Consults with parents, teachers, administrators, and other professionals
- Coordinates Services for students both inside and outside the school
- Reviews/utilizes standardized test results
- Provides information for future planning to students
- Offers workshops for parents and teachers
- Maintains confidentiality
School counselors are committed to the need for preventive and developmental counseling.
Your Child’s Counselor…
- Helps students cope with emotional crisis
- Facilitates better peer relationships
- Encourages students to recognize and make better use of their abilities
- Helps students overcome learning disabilities
- Assists parents and teachers in helping children
- Academic concerns
- Adjustment concerns
- Lack of motivation/avoidance procrastination
- School Attendance
- Alcohol/substance abuse
- Peer problems
- Interpersonal relationships
- Abusive relationships
- Family difficulties/crisis
- Decision-making
- Anxiety
- Depression/hopelessness/sadness
- Stress (Academic or personal)
- Shyness
- Assertiveness
- Eating concerns
- Self-esteem/self-image
- Harassment/bullying
- Loneliness
- Anger
- Grief/loss
- Suicidal thoughts
- Other
The counseling staff exists to assist students with appropriate developmental issues. In some cases, referrals to outside agencies may be encouraged.
Group Offerings
The counseling staff offers a series of small-group counseling experiences for the students of our school. Group counseling is an effective way to reach certain children and help them learn better ways of dealing with personal problems and social skills deficits. Group leader(s) will work with four or five children for 30 minutes once a week.
It is important to distinguish between group guidance and group counseling. Group guidance is educational in nature and involves sharing information that all of the children need, such as friendship skills, being a good citizen of the school, study skills, and so on. This information can be provided to a whole class or an even larger group. Group guidance, something each child needs and deserves on a regular basis, is preventative in nature and helps keep issues from becoming problems in the future. In contrast, group counseling is remedial in nature and involves a counseling relationship between each child in the group and the counselor. It is meant to help solve developmental problems that already exist and to keep these problems from getting out of hand.
Group counseling is not the best choice for every child that has problems. For example, if a child is in a personal or family crisis, a group may not be appropriate during the upheaval, even though he or she might benefit from a group experience in the future. A youngster who is very aggressive or who needs constant attention would not be a good candidate. Some children’s problems are already so pervasive that short-term group counseling would not be appropriate. Therefore, although a child might need counseling services of some kind, very badly, group counseling might not be the best kind of service. We will be happy to find them appropriate help.
Throughout this school year, we shall interview and select students who are good candidates for each of the groups to be offered. The group counseling experiences planned for this year are on the following topics:
Students Experiencing Low Self-Esteem
Anger Management
Young Ladies: Respecting/Loving Self
Deployed Parent(s)
Children of Divorce
Improving Social Skills
Withstanding Peer Pressure
Dealing with Death
Please contact the counseling staff with any questions or to refer viable candidates for any of the groups. Also, please check out each guidance counselor’s webpage located under Specialists.
Shawn Bryant-Addo & Amy Huerta
