Few careers are as potentially-rewarding or as frustrating as that of the guidance counselor.
The guidance counselor’s job is to help guide and structure the student’s educational and vocational directions, as they pan through an unstable and confusing time in their lives.
It can be frustrating because the guidance counselor has limited power to compel students follow advice given to them.
Today’s youth are living in exciting times in an increasingly diverse and mobile society, with new technologies and expanding opportunities. To help ensure they are prepared to become the next generation of good parents, workers, leaders and citizens, every student needs support, guidance, and opportunities during adolescence — a time of rapid growth and change.
Adolescents face unique and diverse challenges, both personally and developmentally that impact academic achievement.
A guidance counselor must have the capabilities of being caring, patient, and open-minded, and to believe that everyone can change.
One of her main goals is to help students understand themselves so they can develop into adults capable of living productive and fulfilling lives, and provide valuable information that could help in struggles with life choices.
She can counsel students individually or sometimes in small groups. A guidance counselor’s job can range from leading classroom discussions, to administering placement tests. She also meets with parents, teachers, and school staff to discuss important issues.
Guidance counselling is, therefore, important because it helps us keep in tune with trends and developments in our own field, and in the choices we make.
It provides stimulation and job satisfaction, and helps to keep us on our toes to make sure we do not become biased and thus, more likely to make mistakes.
Students should not view guidance counselors as an additional burden, but rather school staff to be welcomed who could provide direction to effectively dealing with, and easing burdens.
Counselors who counsel are not like surgeons whose degree of skill can be seen by other surgeons in the operating room; nor like lawyers who can watch one another in the courtroom; nor like teachers who can be evaluated by their students in the classroom.
Counselors work in private, committed to confidentially, and seldom observed by their peers.
Cyraluna Velasco Rival
Tanjay National High School
Opao, Tanjay City