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[quote=Anonymous]As a parent, looking in, I don't understand why people would want to be a counselor in public schools.

My kids have had one intelligent, helpful high school counselor who works with me to implement the curriculum options I've discovered/chosen for them to work within the system.  The others don't show much interest in helping kids do better than just checking boxes.  People who become counselors don't seem to be the good with details, high performing types you see in business.  That's probably because of pay.

A different counselor, in middle school, described her function as giving a safe space for venting.  She was unable to take any useful action when my kid was having trouble with friends and acting disengaged in classes.  I wanted some concrete changes to happen and in the end got some by talking to the principal.  That counselor ended up leaving for a community college counseling job.

From what I can see, there's not much time to build a rapport with your caseload of kids or to really customize things for them.  It's just project management of a caseload and running through a lot of fairly simple paperwork processes.

I don't want my post to sound like it's not possible to find good counselors.  However, I never experienced any in my academic life...in fact I had some who screwed things up a bit for me.  And my kids have only had one who matches the skillset of analysts at my corporate F500 employer.  My sister also recently moved from one "good" school district to another, and the counselors on both ends were inconvenient and inaccurate to work with.

I feel bad this sounds so mean but I would not advise anyone to go into school counseling as a career.  I understand the issues with classroom teaching and I would definitely choose that if I wanted to take a role in contributing to student improvements and growth.

OP, maybe you can find a non-profit that needs an operations manager?  Or a small family-friendly company?[/quote]

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