Education Week - September 16, 2020 - 24

OPINION

INSIDE

Teachers, Live Screen Time Is Precious.
Use It Well

When Black Lives Only Matter
Conditionally

How Ready Are We to Support Kids?

School counselors on what they need during this pandemic

s the global pandemic
threatens students'
academic progress,
recent reports have
also raised alarms
about students' mental
health. Fear, loss,
and the anxiety brought on by uncertainty are
raising already-high levels of trauma and stress
among young people.
It will be tempting for schools to direct
resources and attention this fall to bolstering
the instructional core, given well-founded
fears of learning loss and the widening of
academic inequities. But our research suggests
that districts need to focus just as much on
deploying staff and policies that promote
students' social and emotional development.
School counselors have a critical but often
overlooked role to play in meeting this urgent
need.
According to our survey of nearly 1,000
school counselors from across the country,
these professionals faced significant challenges
last spring as they sought to support
students' social-emotional, academic, and
postsecondary development in a remote
learning environment. Schools should
now make it a priority to understand
what went wrong in the spring, so they
don't repeat the same mistakes this
fall.
First, we found that school
counselors were not able to spend
as much time as usual counseling
students about social-emotional
issues, career development, or
postsecondary plans. This is especially
troubling for a profession that was
already stretched thin to begin with:
Last year, all but three states significantly
exceeded the recommended ratio of
students-to-counselors. In our survey,
43 percent of counselors reported spending
less time providing individual counseling than
in their work pre-COVID-19, despite the stress
and trauma caused by the pandemic.
Instead, a large majority of the counselors-
who regularly worked well beyond their usual
hours-reported spending their time tracking
down students with low attendance in remote
learning and delivering social-service and
technology information to families. These are
worthwhile efforts, of course, but they limited
counselors' ability to check in with students,
assess their well-being, and intervene when
necessary.
Second, our results suggested that a lack
of direction and leadership from school
and district leaders complicated this shift in
responsibilities. Approximately 55 percent of
counselors surveyed reported not receiving
clear directions about their expected role in
a remote environment. One midsize, urban

school district's updated memorandum of
understanding with the teachers' union never
even mentioned school counselors.
While school counselors appreciated ongoing
communication from administration and
district staff, counselors were rarely involved
in planning for remote schooling. Despite their
unique skills in supporting students, only 35
percent of counselors say they were asked to
provide input about school contingency plans
or how to maintain counseling programming.
Counselors also reported that training for
counselor-specific remote work was not
available to them. This problem was especially
acute in rural communities, where 1 in 3
counselors reported receiving no training.
Third, like all educators, school counselors

challenges facing the school counseling
profession. For decades, school counselors have
called on principals to provide better leadership
to counseling programs. Such leadership is now
essential. If schools are committed to healing
students and supporting their engagement in
academics amid a wave of national trauma,
they must heed this call now more than ever.
To support their efforts, we offer the following
recommendations for school and district leaders:
1. Establish a clear plan for school
counseling programming and communicate
it widely. School and district leaders are
often not familiar with counseling models or
standards, so they need to take their lead from
counselors. Strong administrators understand

screening tools to identify depression, trauma,
and other signs of distress.
2. Build time for counseling into student
schedules. Face-to-face time with students-
either virtually or in person when it is safe
to do so-is a precious commodity. School
leaders will therefore need to be intentional
about scheduling time for students to meet
with counselors and for counselors to provide
mental-health support to whole classes,
grades, or schools. Consistent advisory
blocks and office hours might offer structured
times for students to reach out for additional
support. School counselors around the country
have set up Google Classrooms and Bitmoji
offices to be added to district platforms.
3. Evenly distribute the responsibility of
tracking down students. School leaders must
avoid the temptation of assigning attendance
and noncounseling duties to counselors
simply because they are not responsible
for a classroom of students. Pulling school
counselors away from checking in with
students, delivering resources for managing
anxiety, and supporting postsecondary
planning will leave some students
vulnerable to further disengagement.

Robert Neubecker
for Education Week

struggled to adjust to remote schooling. While
navigating personal stressors brought on by
the pandemic, school counselors faced unique
professional challenges as well. In addition to
losing the valuable opportunity to connect with
students in informal settings such as hallways
and lunchrooms, many counselors received
instructions from school leaders not to meet
one-on-one with students, provide group
or classroom instruction, or even use videoconferencing software because of concerns
about meeting confidentiality requirements
remotely.
These findings highlight long-standing

the assets and expertise of counselors and
are careful not to misdirect their time toward
tasks that don't leverage their mental-health
training. With counselors' input, school and
district leaders can prioritize the availability
of counseling programs and services at the
systems level. At a minimum, counselors
can identify counseling-related policies and
practices that transfer to a virtual or hybrid
context. For example, school counselors
can join morning meetings to connect with
students, partner with teachers to integrate
strategies for well-being into classes, and
collaborate with other support staff to utilize

4. Ask counselors if and how
they need support and training to
use virtual platforms to provide
counseling. In our survey, many
school counselors reported having
to use their personal phones to call
students. Often, parents and students
didn't answer those calls, which appear
as if they come from unknown numbers.
Access to a school phone, Google Voice
number, or other platforms to communicate
with students will enable counselors to
conduct confidential or sensitive conversations
with students. School counselors also need
different kinds of training from what is offered
to teachers. Training on virtual platforms,
strategies that support telecounseling, and
legal and ethical considerations are especially
in demand. As the college-admission process
continues to evolve during the pandemic,
school counselors will also benefit from training
on policies and practices that have been
updated during the pandemic.
While today's educational context is
defined by uncertainty, one thing is for
certain: As students return to Zoom rooms or
school buildings, they are hurting. We have
professionals who are trained and ready to help
them heal and develop the social and emotional
skills to cope with their current reality. Let's
be sure to take counselors into account in our
planning this semester. Our students and
teachers are going to need them.

By Mandy Savitz-Romer, Heather Rowan-Kenyon, Tara Nicola, & Laura Hecht
²ßXÀðّªw0ª is the Nancy Pforzheimer Aronson Senior Lecturer in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. ªàyّj0yæy is an associate
professor of education leadership and higher education at the Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development. NICOLA is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education. HECHT is a research manager at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They are the authors of the recently released report "Expanding Support Beyond the Virtual Classroom:
mƵȺȺȌȁȺƊȁƮªƵƧȌǿǿƵȁƮƊɈǞȌȁȺIȲȌǿ²ƧǘȌȌǶ!ȌɐȁȺƵǶȌȲȺ(ɐȲǞȁǐɈǘƵ!ßX(ׁٌ‫!׉‬ȲǞȺǞȺ‫٘خ‬
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