Running head: RISING ABOVE 1

Rising Above: A School Counselor’s Journey

Robert V. Daniel

May 10th, 2020

Capstone paper submitted in partial

fulfillment of the requirements of EGC 513

Guidance and Counseling Culminating Seminar

Dedication:

a. For Eduardo, Sally, Joshua, Ben, Skylar, Colson, and Samad who taught how to
be an effective counselor. I will forever love and miss them…
RISING ABOVE 2

Abstract

In a school district that emphasizes equity and student voice, data gathered during a school

counseling internship found that students were disengaged and feeling voiceless and powerless.

In response to this, a school-based intervention focused on youth advocacy training was devised

to capitalize on youth developmental characteristics and to hold the school systems accountable

to the district and school mission statements. The intervention involved multiple stakeholders

(administration, students, and counseling department) and data driven. The intervention had to be

suspended due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak, though efforts prior to the suspension were

yielding promising evidence that progress was being made toward the goals set out. Impacts and

Implications of the pandemic on students as well as alternative practices that were generated by

the intervention group to operate in a virtual schooling environment are discussed.

RISING ABOVE 3

Description of the School Community

The school site that was the host for my internship and intervention work is Lakota

Middle school in the Federal Way school district, where the mission statement is: “Each scholar;

A Voice, a Dream”. Lakota serves 846 students who span a diverse range of backgrounds and

Socio-Economic status (SES). Significantly, Lakota has a 62.5% free and reduced lunch list and

most families who do not qualify for Free/Reduced lunch at Lakota come from above average

SES backgrounds. It has been observed at Lakota that this dynamic of extreme highs and lows

has been a factor in numerous conflicts, power struggles, and school-family partnership

struggles.

Average daily attendance was reported from the Office of the Superintendent of Public

Instruction (OSPI) at 80%. Internal data obtained from the school district contradicted this with a

higher 90.5%. Academic-33% of students met standard in math and 56% met standard in reading

on the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) in the year prior to the intervention work presented

in this paper. Discipline-7.1% of students received a major disciplinary action (Suspension of

Expulsion) in the year prior to the intervention work presented in this paper. Subgroup analysis

revealed that higher than average rates of discipline were observed among McKinney Vento

Homeless (MV), Foster Care, African American, Mixed Race, and Hispanic groups.

Lakota’s mission statement is as follows: “Lakota Middle School builds an exemplary

learning community through meaningful relationships, relevant and engaging learning while

utilizing effective communication and collaboration.  We challenge each other to be better

than we think we can be as caring and ethical citizens.” This mission is taken very seriously by

the school staff who have a history of prioritizing strong relationships among staff students and

families, especially in the domain of discipline. This is evident in practices such as every student
RISING ABOVE 4

receiving a handshake and a verbal greeting from a staff member as they enter the building first

thing in the morning, Monday morning “Good Things” where classes discuss good things that

happened over their weekends, and the use of Circle Protocol and Affirmation statements in staff

meetings.

Lakota’s Leadership team, consisting of a principal, Assistant Principal, Dean of

Students, and Admin intern, takes a strong stance on equity and social justice. They share,

model, and teach a mindset of equity that is data driven and are focused on building strong

relationships with students and families and repairing the disproportionate application of

discipline to students of color. Administrative leadership staff are also at the forefront of

encouraging effective communication in discipline, encouraging all parties involved in discipline

incidents to write out a reflection form that allows them to tell their side of the story.

Lakota middle school has several positive points around its counseling program. First and

foremost is the character of the relationship between counselor and administration. Prior to the

current year, there has been only one counselor at Lakota, and it has been the same person for

over 20 years. This gives that counselor a huge repository of historical knowledge about families,

staff, systems and traditions in the school, and other useful categories. This knowledge and

tenure make her an indispensable ally that any new admin want to plug into and create the

closest relationship possible. The deep level of trust that arises from such a relationship allows

the counseling program at Lakota to wield much influence and power in the school.

Another place that Lakota has great strength is in its advisory structure. Twice per month,

a 45-minute class period is set aside for the teaching of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

curriculum. Instead of purchasing a district wide curriculum, the counseling department at

Lakota has been given the opportunity to create the lessons to be delivered during this time. This
RISING ABOVE 5

allows the counselors to be more directly responsive to student and building needs, even though

it may not always be using an evidence-based curriculum or well aligned methodology (further

discussion on this point to follow). Lakota is a school of 800 students that has been served by 1

counselor for many years, so the opportunity to roll out any kind of school wide SEL program

would have been impossible if the counselor was responsible for doing so in person in each

classroom. Therefore, this advisory system is a useful structure that can be overseen by the

counselor without requiring 100% of her time being spent in classrooms. It is from within this

advisory system that the opportunity for the present intervention was seen and implemented.

Problem Statement

At Lakota Middle school, each year the counseling department conducts a needs

assessment survey in the fall and again in the spring. Within this survey are questions about

academics, safety, student-staff relationships, comfort level in seeking out various types of

resources at school, and more. In reviewing the data from this needs assessment, a number of

trends were observed.

First, students indicated that student ownership over their academic world is low.

Answers trended “no” to questions about whether academics in middle school mattered for the

future, if students did their best while at school, and if they felt that the classes they were

studying were relevant to them. Interestingly, though, answers trended “yes” to questions about

persisting in school until they graduated. This gave an overall indication that many students did

not value the education opportunities they had before them enough to engage fully in their

pursuit but did see the ultimate outcome of secondary school as valuable.
RISING ABOVE 6

Furthermore, students are reporting not knowing how to advocate, ask for help and

support, or take advantage of existing supports. Answers trended “no” to questions about

whether students felt comfortable going to see their school counselor for help, if they asked

questions in class when they got stuck, and if they consulted notes or went to teachers for extra

help before or after school. This gave an overall indication that even if students did see value in

school, they did not have the skills or knowledge necessary to advocate for their needs in some

domains.

Upon reviewing this data, anecdotal interviews were held with students to interrogate the

conclusions further. Students anecdotally reported feeling powerless, trapped, and forced into the

school system. They felt that they had no say in what they studied or how the school system at

Lakota operated and so did not feel motivated to do their best (academically or behaviorally).

Some reported acting out and getting in trouble to feel like they were seen, feeling that “bad

kids” got attention from adults and good kids were passed over.

This last point of students reporting acting out to gain adult notice or shift power

informed a reaction to the discipline data at Lakota. The subgroups that were receiving the most

discipline (McKinney Vento Homeless (MV), Foster Care, Black, Mixed Race, and Hispanic

groups) are historically groups that tend to have higher rates of Trauma and Adverse Childhood

Experiences (ACES). Students with trauma in their past often incur discipline at school when

that school system in not aligned to be properly responsive to trauma or when the student is less

aware of how their own trauma manifests as behavior or communication.

These details were distilled into two problem statements that could be addressed within

the limited timeframe of the internship. These statements highlight where there are perceived
RISING ABOVE 7

holes in the core values espoused in Lakota’s mission statement. I saw it as a priority to attempt a

solution that would begin to repair those holes.

First, students were feeling a need to have their voices heard and to have some power

within the school system. In order to do that, an effective system of training had to be

implemented. Lakota has students who feel voiceless and powerless and are manifesting that

feeling in varying ways. Some simply withdraw and become passive. Others present at the

opposite end of the spectrum and become explosive and reactive. Neither of these two extremes

represent effective communication, but both certainly are forms of behavior as communication.

As Lakota’s mission statement prioritizes effective communication, I was eager to find a solution

that could train those two extreme sides of the communication spectrum in toward the center

where the valuable voices of the students could be heard and understood.

Second, students were feeling that their experiences at school were not relevant and

would not amount to much of value except graduation. Lakota’s mission statement prioritizes an

exemplary learning community, which does not exist if the students do not value or take

advantage of the learning or the opportunities that they are being offered within the school

setting. What was seen were students disengaging from the learning, not seeking out help or new

opportunities within the classroom, and not advocating for their need to see relevant material or

be exposed to other kinds of learning opportunities. Perhaps this was because they felt they

would not be listened to, in addition to the possibility that they did not know how to ask or

advocate effectively. Both ideas could be addressed through the same process of Advocacy

training.

Literature Review
RISING ABOVE 8

Trauma and Powerlessness

All forms of trauma represent a negative impact upon a child’s needs being met in some

way, such as safety, love and belongingness, intimacy (Maslow 1968). If lower needs on

Maslow’s hierarchy are lacking or destroyed, then predictable impacts can often be observed as

higher order needs become blocked. The ability to learn and stay engaged in school will decrease

as students try to parse their safety, acting out in class may increase as students try to process and

communicate their needs and get them met, and power struggles may increase because trauma

represents a theft of control from the child’s life. The National Children’s Advocacy Center

(2013) reports that children affected by trauma and neglect are at increased risk of academic

underachievement, absenteeism, being held back, dropping out, being referred for Special Ed

services, and demonstrating poor social skills and disruptive classroom behaviors. Neglected

children are reported as being at higher risk than physically traumatized children, and multiple

victimizations compounds these risks. Providing choices and personal power can go a long way

to helping a child impacted by trauma regain some measure of control in their life (GOSOSY

consortium n.d).

One area of particular interest in this regard is assertiveness training. Wolpaw, Johnson,

Hertel and Kinkaid (2016) define assertiveness as the art of communicating that one’s needs are

not being met and working to change that state. These authors define a system called “Giraffe

talk” as a training method and basic framework to assert oneself in all kinds of situations and be

one’s own advocate. Teaching all students this base of assertiveness could go a long way in the

realm of trauma prevention and intervention. As traumas often create unmet needs, teaching

students to advocate can give them a skill to stand up for themselves or to report abusive

situations. As well, having this framework in place may prevent negative behaviors in classes as
RISING ABOVE 9

students would have a method of communicating their needs that is more effective than acting

out or disrupting.

Service as a Form of Power

Research by Farber and Bishop (2018) examined the impact of service-learning

opportunities on young people’s academic and social outcomes. The authors examined students

who participated in a sustainability class that was framed around service learning; focused on

doing things for the benefit of others. Key themes emerged in the assessment of that class such as

a culture of doing, a culture of caring, and a sense of pride in having done things well. These

themes connect well to Erikson’s 4th and 5th stages of psychosocial development (Cherry, 2017).

In the 4th stage, young people are looking for ways to confirm their competence in performing

tasks and using their skills. By building a culture of doing, such as how the students in the class

built a chicken coop, the students can feel pride in their competence that allowed the coop to be

built. In supporting the 5th stage, building a culture of caring for and service to others sets

students up to see that they have value in their community and that they are providing needed

service to others. In these ways, service learning in schools contributes to healthy development.

in addition, this study as well as others (Simons and Cleary 2006) have found that service

learning has significant positive impacts on academic outcomes at multiple school levels (Middle

school all the way into college). The implication for practice as a school counselor is that

organizing regular community service-learning opportunities or opportunities for students to

have a role in shaping their community would be quite an impactful intervention for a variety of

students impacted by trauma or marginalization and exhibiting isolation as a result. By giving

these students an outlet to explore their value in their community and gain safe social interaction,

outcomes could begin to be shifted toward the positive for them.

RISING ABOVE 10

Developmental Level and Peer Influence

In looking to remedy social issues of buy in and relevance in the middle school setting,

an understanding of developmentally appropriate influence is needed. According to Wood

(2015), adolescence is a developmental period in which adult influence wanes and peer influence

grows. This means that if an adult and a peer were to present a youth with equal and opposite

choices in any given situation, it is more likely that the youth will make the choice that aligned

with their peer rather than with the adult. This developmental period of many physical, social,

mental, and emotional changes combined with the growing influence of peers who are

undergoing similar major changes makes adolescence a peak time for risk taking behavior

(Capuzzi and Gross, 2014).

This background in developmental influence is essential to consider as building a solution

will require youth voice and leadership (Brooks et al, 2019). The school system is traditionally

built by and filled with policies defined by adults who then foist these policies upon young

people, which can make young people feel powerless, trapped, and disconnected. This is even

more likely to be true for youth who have experienced trauma, as was discussed above.

A tool to consider in moving toward a solution is the Social Discipline window, a

component of the restorative practices model (Watchel, 2013). The Social Discipline window

defines 4 quadrants of working with youth: Not Doing, Doing To, Doing For, and Doing With.

Each of these quadrants represents a level of youth-adult partnership. Traditional school policy is

firmly within the Doing To quadrant; Adults make the policy and expect youth to follow. In

aligning with developmentally appropriate peer influence, a creative solution to the issue of

academic buy-in and relevance would be to create a model in the Doing With Quadrant; giving

youth an opportunity to co-create policy that would be enacted for their classmates.
RISING ABOVE 11

SMART Goals and ASCA Closing the Gap Action Plan

The approach that was designed to address these issues of engagement and relevance at

Lakota middle school was dubbed the Scholar Voice Collaborative (SVC); an advisory class of

hand selected students who would engage in a cycle of inquiry to identify an issue at their school

and practice assertive advocacy to find a solution using their own youth voice. In order to

perform these cycles of inquiry, the SCV students would: Collaborate to select an issue

impacting students, Review existing data related to the issue, Conduct interviews and surveys

and analyze new data, and Create proposal of action and present recommendations to School

Leadership team

The Overall goal of SVC is to support youth in finding their voice, knowing how to

become agents of change in school community, and Generalize change agency skills to any

community they find themselves in. Activities within the group are focused on teaching

advocacy, assertive communication, and self-efficacy skills. The theoretical basis for the group

was rooted in developmental peer influence and power. The group was designed to give voice to

the voiceless within the school system, training marginalized students to use their voice to

influence policy in way that administration would be able to hear. Teaching them to use data,

assertive methods of communication, and solid demonstrations of reasoning would give their

voice more power within the system. One of the outcome goals was that once policy decisions

began to be informed by youth voice, general student buy-in to the policy and school structure

would increase as students would know that some policy decisions were informed by their peers

and not just by adults.

RISING ABOVE 12

The other outcome goal was small group focused. The group was made up of 15 students

who were chosen based on their communication style: half of them avoidant communicators who

rarely spoke up and the other half aggressive communicators who tended to yell or react

aggressively when challenged by teachers or corrected. Neither of these styles of communication

can be called effective when it comes to influencing policy and accessing power within a school

system, but both are likely the result of learning somewhere along the student’s life. Given this,

the second goal for this group, the attainment of which was to be instrumental on the way to

attaining the first, was to teach the skills of assertive communication to the group members.

Assertive communication falls at the midpoint between avoidant communication (which

maintains relationships by avoiding conflict but often fails to get needs met) and aggressive

communication (which can harm relationships but can also announce unmet needs and force

others to meet them). Assertive communication methods are effective because they announce

unmet needs, propose a method to meet the needs, and maintain respect for self and others

(Wolpaw, Johnson, Hertel and Kinkaid, 2016).

Prior to the group’s commencement, a pre-survey assertiveness, advocacy skills, and self-

efficacy was administered to establish a baseline. As predicted, the group averaged low, with

defeatist, reluctant, or passive attitudes predominating (e.g., “I can’t ask for help because no one

will listen” or “I am embarrassed to ask for help”). This data, along with data from the annual

counseling needs assessment informed the two Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and

Timely (SMART) goals that would be used to evaluate the intervention. First, by spring 2020,

student measures of student engagement on annual counseling needs assessment would increase

by 10% from 55% to 65%. Second, by June of 2020, Measures of assertiveness, advocacy skills,

and self-efficacy within the SVC group would increase by 20% from 4 average to 6 average.
RISING ABOVE 13

The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) mindsets and behaviors selected to

guide the work of the group were as follows. M 3: Sense of belonging in the school environment.

By teaching skills to increase their voice and access to central power within the school this

mindset was the overall goal for the intervention, both for the small group and for the wider

school community. Social Skills 8: Demonstrate advocacy skills and ability to assert self, when

necessary. This behavior was to be measured by the pre- and post-assessment of assertiveness,

advocacy skills, and self-efficacy. Learning Strategies 9: Gather evidence and consider multiple

perspectives to make informed decisions. This behavior was to be measured by the final group

goal of making a presentation to the school administration about the problem they had researched

and the solution that they had come up with.

Action Plan Implementation and Results

Action Plan Implementation

Buy in and assistance from the administrative team at Lakota was essential in order to

implement this program. After presenting data from the counseling needs assessment and my

own anecdotal interviews with students, the team was quickly on board with the proposed SVC

intervention and they were able to assist me in identifying and recruiting the population of

students that would best fit the goals of the program and to secure time and space to deliver the

intervention lessons.

The actual work of the intervention was done in bi-weekly advisory classroom lessons

drawn from the Community Advocacy Training modules obtained from World Vision. The focus

of these training modules was teaching student the skills they would need in order to create and

carry out an independent advocacy project. The curriculum included group instruction and
RISING ABOVE 14

practice led by a facilitator, as well as activities that were to be done largely absent of facilitator

influence so that students could grow their independent skills. I chose to organize and frame the

independent activities similarly to professional work groups, to increase students’ sense of

empowerment and ownership over the process. Lessons were divided into roughly 3 phases.

Phase 1 included the foundational work of group norming and forming, instruction in the Giraffe

Talk Protocol, and conducting a community scan as a group. The community scan was an

activity to teach the students to examine their school community with a critical eye that they

normally did not employ during the school day.

Phase two consisted of brainstorming problems and issues within the school community

that came to light during the community scan or as a result of the observation protocol learned in

order to do the scan. In order to critically evaluate the issues identified, a root cause analysis

protocol was taught and practiced. The protocol was then employed in order to analyze what

could be at the root of the issues the students identified and think over it from multiple

perspectives. Once the root causes were identified, phase two concluded with students working

through a protocol to identify their own inherent skills that could be of use when advocating for

change. During this lesson, students were surprised with what they were able to identify about

themselves, many having scored quite low on the pre-assessment but were then subsequently

able to name and claim many skills that could help them advocate for themselves or others.

Phase three was the research, solution generation, and presentation phase. Having done

the work to scan their community critically for issues that were important to them as students,

established root causes for those issues, and evaluate their own change making skills the students

split themselves into groups in order to tackle 4 issues that were important to them. The groups

were determined by the issue selected, with students electing to join a group in order to work on
RISING ABOVE 15

a solution for that issue. The issues identified were as follows: bullying behavior, a culture of

fighting at the school, youth mental and social health, dress policy. The groups’ next task was to

work together to research the issue and come up with a creative and informed solution. Groups

would present these issues in a Shark Tank style format to the administrative team following a

protocol; giving their community scan synopsis, their root cause analysis, their research and data

on the issue, and finally the details of the solution they had come up with to either solve or bring

awareness to the issue.

In between sessions with the SVC students there was work to be done with the

administrative team. In order to ensure receptivity for the SCV students’ eventual presentations

and to maintain a professional relationship, I shared weekly updates about the progress of the

SVC process with the administrative team. The team was impressed that I was teaching the

students to utilize protocols that were also used at school staff meetings and other forums to

analyze student data.

Pandemic Impact

On March 13th, 2020 it was announced that schools in Washington state would be closing

for over a month due to the pandemic threat of the SARS-CoV-2 virus colloquially known as

“Coronavirus”. As the planned outage rolled on, the return date was extended further into the

future, and then finally it was announced that in person learning was called off for the rest of the

school year. Federal Way School District sent out home learning packets to attempt to address

learning loss, and then shifted to an online distance learning model to add intentional teacher

support back in.

RISING ABOVE 16

For some students, the school closure has been a blessing. Some are finding he shift to

remote learning to be a relief for their anxiety or they are expressing a greater sense of focus due

to fewer distractions around them. For other students and families, it has been a nightmare. For

these students, school was the safe place they were able to go every day to get a hot meal and to

get away from stressors at home such as homophobic parents or siblings who mistreat them. The

shift to at home learning has cut them off from their sources of food, separated them from

supportive adults and peers, and shut down their learning process partially or entirely preventing

them from making the kind of academic growth they are capable of and widening the

opportunity gap ever further. In addition, it is being speculated that many students impacted by

this event will have a new ACE as a result, putting them further at risk for severe negative

impacts in the future.

In an effort to minimize negative impacts and continue to offer opportunities to help SVC

students grow their voices, a proposal was put to them to consider ways that they could practice

their advocacy while schools were closed. At the time of this writing, SVC students are working

on creating uplifting videos to share with their classmates to help them cope with the impacts of

the pandemic. The idea for the videos was entirely SVC student generated, and the effort

continues the theoretical spirit of the group in leveraging peer influence. As the videos are made

by students for students and informed by the lens of advocacy developed in the group, it is hoped

that they will have a positive impact on the community, even when isolating at home.

Predictions of Intended Outcome

As a result of the pandemic and the closure, the SVC intervention work had to be called

off before phase 3 could completed; before the policy recommendations the students were

working on could be finalized and presented. In addition, neither the post-assessment of

RISING ABOVE 17

assertiveness, advocacy skills, and self-efficacy nor the spring counseling needs assessment

could be administered resulting in no data being available to empirically evaluate the

effectiveness of the intervention.

Despite this, I am confident that the student level goal set for the group would have been

met. During the intervention, students in the group became very invested in finding and

researching issues impacting them and their community and workshopping solutions. The

students were excited to come to group and to present their “Shark Tank” proposals to

administration. In addition, the quality of conversations that were observed among students in

the group setting demonstrated evidence of critical thinking, increased perspective taking, and

confidence in discussing plans and issues. Students eventually had few issues seeking

clarification or help during group sessions and would get excited to challenge and debate with

the facilitator during group discussion. Finally, the willingness which the students are currently

showing to get on a Zoom session and discuss new ideas to enact while isolating at home and

produce inspirational videos showcasing their own vulnerability add to the assessment that

progress had been made toward the group goal.

If the intervention had a few more weeks to run, the students would have been able to

finalize and present their issues and solutions to the administration. Given the high quality of

discussion and research that the students had engaged in up to the point of the school closure, I

am confident that the presentations would have been solid and impactful with administration.

This view is further galvanized by the knowledge that Lakota’s administration team was fully

onboard with the SVC plan, excited that students were learning critical analysis and feedback

protocols like Giraffe Talk and root cause analysis, and looking forward to what the students

would come up with. Solid preparation along with relationship and data leveraging that I was
RISING ABOVE 18

able to do on both the student side and the administration side would mean that at least some of

the presented solutions would have been enacted. The others that were not enacted would have

received thoughtful and compassionate feedback and validation. Enacting at least some of the

student proposals and publicizing the policy change as student initiated would have made

progress toward the school level goal.

Reflection and Professional Growth Goals

My internship experience at Lakota middle school provided a breadth of deep lessons and

insight as I consider navigating the path of being a professional school counselor. One of the

most positive observations was how well respected my mentor counselor was by all the school

staff. My mentor sat on all the building’s leadership teams and was often looked to for input

more so than the building principal.

I was also lucky because I was able to witness and take part in the growth of the

counseling department during my internship. For the past 10 years, my mentor had been the only

counselor at Lakota, and the year I interned a second counselor was added. It was instructive to

be able to see how my mentor adapted from operating solo into overseeing a department of 3

school counselors (myself included). Learning how to operate in a newly forming team taught

me many things about how a counseling program is built, assessed, and changed. Being an

intern, I was assumed to have the benefit of naivete in many matters, but being able to observe

the new full time counselor gave me insight into how to effectively assimilate into an established

educational structure and effect change where there was an observed need.

At Lakota, I was able to put all the counseling skills into practice to assist in the

development of the counseling department and program. I wrote SEL lessons for advisory
RISING ABOVE 19

classes, reviewed data, ran support meetings, conducted individual and group sessions, built

strong relationships, and much more to support the functioning of the school. I was also able to

develop programming of my own to benefit students, such as after school opportunities and

meditation efforts. By approaching this diverse programming, I was able to see that school

counseling can take many forms. School counselors can impact students in many settings and

can infuse so much creativity into their efforts.

I gained important insights from the process of organizing and implementing group

counseling experiences. From observing the need, to planning, recruiting, executing, and

evaluating new observations kept arising that I was able to categorize for future improvement.

The group counseling session is not just a place to address specific skills or behavioral deficits; it

is an opportunity to grow student leadership, explore hopes and dream, and build capacity to

realize those dreams.

During the internship experience at Lakota, I learned a lot about the nature of conflict and

how behavior is a form of communication. Overheard many times at Lakota was the phrase “they

are doing this for attention”. Reflecting on that idea and why it seemed to be so widespread and

hold such a negative energy, led me to a conclusion. Most kids do not act out for attention, their

behavior is communicating a need for relationship. There were several students at Lakota who

ended up gravitating to me who had no solid relationships with anyone else on staff. They were

perceived as difficult to handle, poor listeners, and having explosive behavior issues. When they

were with me, however, they were respectful, would complete tasks, and would speak openly

about how they felt. There seemed to be a sense of safety and trust with me and that is because I

took time to listen without judgement to them and to demonstrate my persistence in responding
RISING ABOVE 20

to their calls for relationship, however harsh or angry they may have been. These students, who

scared or intimidated other staff members, became near and dear to me.

I also learned important lessons about leadership. I was offered opportunities for

leadership and input in a wide range of domains and settings and sought for advice from many

folks once I became known as a keen observer. Leadership is not always bright, shiny, and on

stage. Sometimes, it is a silent observation and a soaring bird’s perspective over things that lends

key information to a problem being worked on or a solution being sought. I observed this and

other leadership styles operating at Lakota, a school that prides itself on empowering others.

Many people in the building had unique opportunities for distributed leadership and all of them

approached that opportunity with their unique style of leadership, some loud others not.

Despite the many lessons that I learned about conflict, actively navigating it is still a

significant area of growth for me. Conflict is natural, but my default approach to it is still to

avoid it when I have low trust. In order to be an effective advocate for students, I need to be able

to place myself into the breach where I am needed and call upon a wide array of skills in order to

navigate it successfully. Whether it is a physical conflict between students, or an ideological

conflict between staff, or an emotional conflict with an upset parent, these are not arenas that an

effective school counselor can run and hide from.

A deeper knowledge of legal matters is another area that I plan to expand my knowledge

of. FERPA, HIPPA, and Special Education Law are areas where I know that I need to spend

effort to grow in order to make sure that I can advocate for the safety and success of all students.

A school counselor has access to so much information about students that it is vital they know

how best to protect and interact with that information properly and within the bounds of the law.
RISING ABOVE 21

Seeking out additional training on Education Law, and on de-escalation techniques will be first

on the list of professional growth goals.

RISING ABOVE 22

References

Brooks, K., Mendelson, T., Holifield, J., Moore, A., Johnson, H., & Mmari, K. (2019,

November). Centering Youth Voice: Creating and Sustaining a Youth Advisory Board.

In APHA's 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo (Nov. 2-Nov. 6). American Public Health

Association.

Capuzzi, D., & Gross, D. R. (2014). Youth at risk: A prevention resource for counselors,

teachers, and parents. Alexandria, VA, US: American Counseling Association.

Cherry, K. (2017). Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development. Psychology.

Psychosocial Theories. Päivitetty, 14, 2017.

Farber, K., & Bishop, P. (2018). Service Learning in the Middle Grades: Learning by Doing and

Caring. RMLE Online, 41(2), 1-15.

GOSOSY Consortium. (n.d.). Strategies for Helping Kids with ACEs. Retrieved April 10, 2020,

from https://www.osymigrant.org/ACEs.html

Holcomb-McCoy, C. (2007). School counseling to close the achievement gap: A social justice

framework for success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Maslow, A.H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Van Nostrand

National Children's Advocacy Center. (2013). As a Matter of Fact: The relationship between

child maltreatment and academic achievement. Retrieved May 14, 2019, from

https://www.nationalcac.org/prevention-fact-sheets/

Simons, L., & Cleary, B. (2006). The influence of service learning on students' personal and

social development. College Teaching, 54(4), 307-319.

RISING ABOVE 23

Wachtel, T. (2013). Defining restorative. International Institute for Restorative Practices, 12.

Wood, C. (2015). Yardsticks: Children in the classroom, ages 4-14. Turners Falls, MA: Center

for Responsive Schools.

Wolpow, R., Johnson, M. M., Hertel, R., & Kincaid, S. O. (2016). The heart of learning and

teaching: Compassion, resiliency, and academic success. Office of Superintendent of

Public Instruction (OSPI) Compassionate Schools.