I expect to gain valuable insight into a counselor’s roles and responsibilities. I believe that knowledge is power and in the end will always be an asset. Since I am not in a traditional school, I have given quite a bit of thought to this project and appropriate questions to ask my counselor. She has already been helpful in many ways some probably traditional and some could be a stretch, I am actually unsure. I have had a couple of students who were homeless and she has helped them in many ways. She has asked me to assist students that were badly in need of “extra help” in order to graduate.
I have seen her be very tough on a student with a tremendous amount of absenteeism, but yet she gave him another chance. I really learned something from that encounter.
The interview questions hopefully will elicit the information I need to improve my program. For instance, one question that I cannot wait to ask is “How is the information about my program communicated to other counselors? I have had many students tell me that their counselors or advisors knew nothing of my program and others have told me that they were told it didn’t exist. On another occasion, I had a student placed in my class after two thirds of the program was complete and the student was seeking certification and was told she could catch up. SOooooooooo………I expect improvement.
I agree. I feel that we may learn alot by doing these interviews. I am doing both of them and I really feel the information will be great. The SEVLT at my school is our counslor and she is wonderful. I'm sure I will get some good useful information from her. Being that all of our students are IEP students our staff of counselors ahs more to do. I look foward to doing this project.
ReplyDeleteI have not done my interview yet and honestly am still debating weither doing the school counselor the the technical school administrator. After reading your post, I do believe the most beneficial thing to come from interviewing the school counselor is to find out how much they know about my program and how they help students get placed in my class. I am interested in interviewing a technical school administrator to help build a bridge between my program and the community but I have only been doing this for 1 1/2 years so it may be more important to start within the school making connections and then spread out.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great idea because I don’t have a clue to what counselors think about my class. As I have been saying in this blog, it is really important for me to talk to the counselors just to get an indication of what is really being said about and thought about the class that I have. Everything you are saying simply reinforces what I should have already done 2 years ago!
ReplyDeleteHi, Delores - I'm guessing that your counselor is Sandy Sanders and her 1/2 time partner. Sandy is great at helping you with students. Her no-nonsense approach is tempered by fairness and she gets results. When I was there back last century she helped me build the program I inherited back to solid status . . . you'll learn a great deal from your interview with her . . . tell her I said hello.
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