Guiding Hands Find New Ways

Amid Tough Economic Times, School Counselors Are Adopting Fresh Ideas for Helping Students

They don't just wait for students to come to their offices in search of college brochures, health pamphlets or other help. These days, counselors are scouring schools for at-risk kids to prevent personal or academic troubles before they arise. In tough economic times, students and families need the guidance more than ever.

"We really as a profession have gone from being reactive to being proactive," said Rebekah Schlatter, director of guidance and counseling at Prince William County's Woodbridge Senior High School. The old model, she said, "was putting out fires all day long."

Counselors play a steadying role in schools as the economy weighs on families, college admissions becomes ever more competitive, immigration continues to reshape the population and high-stakes testing pressures many students. They use computers to sift through attendance data, grades and standardized test scores to create profiles of kids who might need extra help.

Schlatter has checked attendance records against grades and test results to start peer groups for students who are failing classes but not skipping them. That's a separate problem from kids who fail because of chronic truancy, she said, though all failing students might once have been lumped together.

Group counseling is another way to reach more students, Schlatter said, though it can be difficult. "Kids really do start helping and sharing with each other," she said.

The Woodbridge High counseling department is a small enclave off the administrative suite. On a campus with more than 2,500 students, there are 155 teachers and seven regular counselors. Each counselor has a caseload of 350 to 400 students. It's difficult for school administrators to ease that load. With revenue tight, nearly every available extra dollar is flowing to classrooms and teacher salaries.

So counselors must find new ways to reach more students.

At Fairfax High School, counselors found through surveys that students who transferred to the school after ninth grade enjoyed school significantly less than those who had been there all four years. The counseling staff set up a special orientation program and group for new arrivals in response, said Marcy Miller, the school's director of student services. Counseling staff members also have started small study groups for students to prepare for state Standards of Learning exams, which Miller said have helped raise test scores. She said that some of the newest counselors have had some of the freshest ideas.

Counselors at elementary and middle schools also are seeking to boost achievement, though their roles change as kids get older. Their offices don't tend to be as well-staffed as those in high schools, meaning less one-on-one time with students. Elementary counselors often run early-intervention programs; those in middle school help students sort through normal hormonal tensions and get prepped for high school.

Good counseling doesn't just come from new methods -- it requires hard work, too. Diane Reese, counselor for a secondary education and training program at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, was named one of the top 10 counselors in the country this year by the American School Counselor Association. Like Schlatter and Miller, she uses the new data-driven methods. But she also spends a lot of time at school, making sure to talk to all of her 100 to 120 students at least twice a week. One of her tricks: She keeps a bucket of candy in her office to lure students in as often as possible.

"They're not the children I gave birth to," Reese said, "but they're my other children."