Connections in the School Counseling Program

Since I have started the School Counseling Program at Millersville, this has been one of the few classes that I have gone into knowing very little about what to expect or what it was even really about.  I had some ideas and I was pretty sure we would be learning about intelligence testing at some point.  Aside from that I didn't have a clear outline of the class.  After reading Chapters 1, 2 and 17 for this week, I feel more confident about the material we will be studying and the information that I have already gained from our program.  One of the biggest surprises to me was what a broad topic assessment really is and includes.  It is true that whenever I have heard of assessment I immediately think of testing.  "But, assessment goes beyond merely giving tests.  It is a comprehensive process that involves the integration of information from multiple data collection methods" (Drummond and Jones, p. 2, 2010).  It was made obvious to me as soon as I started our reading that assessment is so much more than I had previously thought.  This also gave me a better grasp on why this class was so important to our program.  I know that testing is done in schools and is important to many students' educations but I didn't quite understand why school counselors would be required to thoroughly understand tests like these.  After our first class and these chapters, I now see how crucial the assessment process is to the success of our children and students.  School counseling really includes the holistic view of a student and that is what assessment tries to do for a school counselor.  It provides multiple methods and sources to pull information from in order to see the bigger picture and better understand  your student.  Just like we tried to put the puzzle together in class, we need to piece together information from different sources and methods of assessment to determine the student's concern and how to better intervene.  It never occurred to me that observing a child, interviewing the child or family members or a teacher could fall into this category.  Now I can see the role a school counselor may take in this process and how beneficial it is that we understand the testing process and how it fits into the general topic of assessment.

I was also able to appreciate the connections and overlapping that has been done throughout our program in order to strengthen concepts and skills.  I had always struggled with putting everything altogether in undergrad but now I can see the purpose for each class and how they build onto each other.  Going through Chapter 1 I was able to find some connections to guidance program development, classroom discipline and other classes (Drummond and Jones, 2010).  Chapter 2 was building off of classroom discipline by looking into the different methods of assessment, how they are used, and how to record data from observations (Drummond and Jones, 2010).  Chapter 17 I found to connect to both guidance program development and our counseling classes by discussing the importance of confidentiality and ethical guidelines (Drummond and Jones, 2010).  I also found that many of the judicial decisions and other legal issues connected with my Special Education class (Drummond and Jones, 2010).  These have all been important periods in time when legal issues changed how education, testing, assessment and others have been viewed/used.  I am hoping that as the class goes on I will continue to find these connections and better put together my career as a future school counselor.

Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.