As a school counselor, one of our jobs is to help our students begin the process of discovering who they are as individuals, members of the local community, and members of the Global Community. As students set out on the journey to discover who they are they begin by learning how to identify their feelings and emotions properly. A key part of the process involves helping students learn how to identify and balance their various roles beginning with the family and school environments. With the constant progression of technology, the fact that everyone belongs to the global community is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Counselors teach students about citizenship and how to contribute to the community which involves learning how to identify and recognize personal character traits needed for a variety of situations.
An essential aspect of a student’s personal and social development is the need to learn how to interact with others in ways that respect both individual and group differences. We begin by teaching the students how to build quality relationships through lessons that focus on not only what good friend is but also how a good friend will behave. A key part of learning to be a good friend is learning how to show respect for one’s self and others. As school counselors, we do this by helping the students to identify the similarities and differences between themselves and others as well as in their school community. Finally, as students learn how to interact with others in a respectful way, it is important to teach them how to take personal responsibility. Counselors do this by helping students discover the impact their actions have on others both positive and negative.
As students learn about themselves and others it is important to teach them how to apply personal safety skills and coping strategies. Learning how to identify safe and healthy choices at home and school is an important part of that, additionally learning to identify the steps of problem solving and decision making processes is equally important. Along that line every year we cover how to identify both safe and unsafe situations as well as personal safety strategies.