Changed Impressions

After reading the website articles I felt good that my perceived roles of counselors were quite accurate. However the articles did provide some better insight into the field of counseling. In the article titled "A Brief History of School Guidance and Counseling in the United States" it was interesting to find out that guidance counseling began with vocational advising and not mental health counseling. The most informative article was entitled "Why secondary school counseling" where it discussed in detail the challenges faced by the 21st century school counselor. It discussed the role of counselors in the "design, development, implementation and evaluation of a comprehensive, developmental and systematic school-counseling program". Based on the recent pressures of high-stakes test scores, guidance counselors now have the tremendous responsibility to use data to influence academic success, a role that previously did not exist.