High school can be a wonderful time in one’s life, but there’s no denying it’s a breeding ground for insecurity and stress. For many, this is the first time in their lives they’ve had to balance such a workload on top of personal commitments and challenges. Mental health issues among teens are out of control with 1 in 5 having to deal with a mental illness at some point in time and many more going undiagnosed. 17% of Oregon students, burdened by a range of personal commitments and struggles drop out of high school and others deal with their pent-up stress, frustration, and insecurity with unhealthy vices.
A large part of what school counselors do is helping students deal with these problems. They work in three domains: academic development, college/career readiness, and social and emotional learning. They work with students one-on-one and implement school-wide systems and improve student life within these domains.
The South counseling department, for example, has implemented suicide prevention programs into South and organized several events to connect and support students in recent years, from a destress event during finals week to regular class visitations guiding students through important transition periods in their life like class forecasting and entering or leaving high school.
South’s counseling department, along with countless others, is under resourced and overworked. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends assigning a maximum of 250 students to each school counselor Student to counselor ratios in Salem-Keizer tend to be large, and South Salem has the largest ratio in the district at around 500 to 1. This makes it very difficult for our counseling department give each student the help they may need in the three domains.
Students who disobey school rules are often forced through the same time-consuming discipline loop in school. Undergoing detention and suspension over and over again, they come to associate education with this vicious cycle, which rarely produces a positive impact on their behavior. Additionally, mental health issues among teens are not going down anytime soon and many students find themselves lacking the skills and support to deal with them.
“As counselors I think our biggest challenge is managing our caseloads with fidelity.” said South Salem Counselor Ben Handrich. “We want to serve every student and make sure that we’re able to follow up effectively when crises arise and also just be able to help students that aren’t having any crises.”
A counselor is much more likely than an individual student’s own efforts or weeks in detention to get to the root of a student’s problems and help them solve them. Their job, when confronted with a student having difficulties in school, is to help them grow and move past the rut they’re in rather than discipline the behavior.
A 2012 ASCA study of school counselors across six states determined that effective counselors positively affect attendance, discipline, and academic achievement significantly. A statewide counseling initiative in which Colorado schools created 220 new counseling positions over eight years and provided them with training oversaw dropout rates dipping from 5.5% to 3.7%, a 13-point increase in college attendance and persistence, and doubled career and technical education participation rates. Because more high school students attended school, this investment actually increased the schools’ funding base and the counseling positions actually made the state over $300 million.
“One of the biggest challenges districts face is helping students graduate on time and that’s a really big role that counselors play,” said Handrich. “But when there’s only five of us serving over 2,000 kids it gets challenging to manage some of that information.”
Hiring more school counselors and referring struggling students to them when needed would make it possible for counselors to give each student the support they may need and continue to implement school-wide systems within the three domains, which in turn could significantly improve dropout rates, mental health, and academic performance for South students, and would very likely pay for itself several times over.
South students can speak with or schedule a meeting with their counselor by emailing them, calling 503-399-2644, or filling out a form on their virtual office.
