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[quote=Anonymous]I’m a MCPS school counselor who has worked at all three levels, so I’ll offer my perspective and experience.

Elementary: Regular classroom lessons; lunch bunches (eg friendship, social skills and other special interest groups); advising teachers; being a part of the EMT team that looks into learning, emotional and attentional needs of students and reads outside reports, with expert input from the school psychologist; help parents find outside therapists and other appropriate specialists via our referral network; meet with students individually because they request it, their parent requests it, or a teacher or administrator requests it, or because we think there’s a need based on our observations; do some parent coaching when asked; meet with middle school counselors to facilitate the promotion of students; help with information and back to school nights etc. I was the only counselor in my elementary school, though some schools in the county have 1.5 or maybe a multilingual counselor depending on the population.

Middle: All of the above, minus doing as many classroom lessons, though we do go in roughly quarterly to help students understand scheduling or to help teachers with advisory-type lessons on everything from suicide prevention to scheduling processes to helping students know when and how to reach out to one of us. There was one counselor per grade in my middle school, and so there was more tag teaming. The biggest difference is that in middle school we do scheduling, which isn’t all year, but is time-consuming when we’re in the midst of it. In middle school, more students come to us for support on their own. We see a ton of friendship challenges in this age group. We also see more teacher-student friction, and this also is when a lot of children begin falling behind academically if there are any undiagnosed or emerging issues.

High: Much like middle, but add to the list things like ensuring that kids will have all their high school credits; fewer kids are getting their first diagnoses and more already have therapists in place if needed; we have to write college recommendations and do some advising about college and career options (though we have no training in college admissions and honestly aren’t consistently good at it); we have far fewer interactions with parents in high school. In both middle and high school, we are dealing with more absenteeism issues and more substance use. Bigger problems too.

Overall, if you’re not sure if you should call your child’s counselor but need support, reach out to one of us! If we are not the right point of contact, we will steer you in the right direction. Please know that we are not administrators. If you’re angry with a teacher, or if you think a student should be disciplined, we have no power to impose consequences or write someone up. But we can help you relay your frustrations and help your child manage the situation as well.  [/quote]

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