Counselors and Principals: Collaborating to Improve Instructional Equity

School districts are held accountable for the performance of all students. This increased responsibility has caused principals and their faculties to become increasingly concerned about using performance data to improve achievement, attendance, promotion and graduation rates, dropout rates and at-risk student performance, and other indicators of school quality. An often overlooked resource in the school’s efforts is the school counselor. School counselors are well-prepared to assist principals with data utilization and making recommendations for individual student, classroom, and school-wide improvement. Collaborative relationships between principals and school counselors can contribute significantly to school improvement efforts and to professional learning and capacity building for all staff. Working on the school improvement team, conducting equity audits, and organizing job-embedded professional development, professional learning communities, and data teams can be essential elements in collaborative school improvement leadership. Joining the principal’s view from the balcony with the counselor’s view from the dance floor (Heifetz and Linsky, 2002) can bring excellence and equity for all students into focus

Crossing the Suspension Bridge: Navigating the Road from School Suspension to College Success – How Some Students Have Overcome the Negative Implications of School Suspension to Bridge the Road to College

Out-of-school suspensions for middle and high school students can have negative, long-lasting consequences. Researchers have documented that suspensions have a negative impact on academic development, increase likelihood of dropping out of school, and are associated with a stronger likelihood that students will be involved in the legal system. However, there are students who overcome these negative statistics and matriculate to post-secondary education successfully. This study examines the lived experiences and personal attributes in students’ lives that enabled them to overcome a history of suspension to enter and succeed in higher education. Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, the study’s researchers interviewed individuals who have a history of middle and/or high school suspensions and matriculated to higher education. Findings suggest that sense of belonging; family, home,/school support; and strength of relationships helped participants neutralize the impact and mitigate the negative aspects of suspension

The need to belong: an exploration of belonging among urban middle school students

The need to belong is a fundamental human motivation and involves an individual’s desire to experience a sense of worthiness to receive respect and love (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Osterman, 2000). Although the need to belong is fundamental for all human beings, young adolescents in particular have a driving need to feel accepted and belong, with a desire to define themselves according to their groups and social contexts (Newman, Lohman, & Newman, 2007; Collins & Steinberg, 2006; Noam, 1999). Considering adolescents spend more time in school than any other setting (Eccles & Roeser, 2011), sense of belonging in school is a critical concept to explore. Although belonging in school is important across grade levels and various school contexts (e.g. Anderman, 2002; Osterman, 2000; Sanchez, Colon, & Esparza, 2005), sense of belonging may be particularly impactful for middle school students in urban settings. Middle school represents a period of vulnerability for all adolescents, but it may be especially challenging for students living in poverty, who are often situated in urban settings and face a myriad of challenges within the home, school, and community contexts (Berliner, 2006; Gutman & Midgley, 2000). Given that belonging can play out differently in various contexts (Nasir et al., 2011), it is imperative to better understand what constitutes belonging specifically for urban students. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding what comprises belonging for diverse student groups (Faircloth & Hamm, 2005), and there are a number of limitations in the current literature that has made conceptual clarity of belonging in school elusive. The purpose of the current study was to clarify what constitutes belonging for urban middle school students through obtaining their subjective perspectives including affective, behavioral, and familial dimensions of belonging. The researcher implemented Q methodology, grounded in a bioecological framework, in order to explore the perspectives of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students in one urban middle school. Three factors emerged from the study representing distinct viewpoints on belonging in school. Perspectives included students who had a sense of belonging tied to the academic culture of the school, those who desired authenticity and affective connections with others, and those who viewed belonging as cultural respect and adult support. Findings from this study support that belonging is a complex and multidimensional construct that includes affective, behavioral, and familial dimensions. Implications for educators, school counselors, and researchers are discussed

Beginning Counselor Educators’ Experiences of Teaching Mentorship

Mentoring can positively impact counselor educators’ teaching in terms of self-efficacy and growth in skills. Yet, counselor educators have reported a desire for more mentoring in the development of their teaching. Utilizing consensual qualitative research methodology, we explored the teaching-specific mentorship of beginning counselor educators’ (N = 13) within their first two to four years as faculty. Emergent themes included mentoring structure such as mentors’ methods of providing mentorship, mentoring relationship dynamics such as relational supports and frustrations, and the positive and negative impacts of mentoring relationships. In addition to building rapport and strengthening mentees’ self-efficacy, mentors and mentees can develop intentional mentoring relationships with a comprehensive focus emphasizing the development of teaching knowledge and skills through practices such as teaching observation and feedback. Additionally, discussing the needs, goals, and expectations of both parties and the inherent power differential of the relationships can help focus the mentoring experiences

Who Took “Counseling” out of the Role of Professional School Counselors in the United States?

The rates of mental health concerns among school-aged youth are increasing and the growing rates of students considering or planning for suicide is alarming. Although school counselors are often the only professionals with the training to support students’ mental health needs in schools, they are often inaccessible to students to receive long-term mental health counseling services. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) advocates for school counselors to focus on prevention, short-term intervention, and crisis work rather than long-term counseling given their primary role in other activities such as student planning and systems support (ASCA, 2019). However, the role of school counselors advocated by ASCA is insufficient to meet students’ growing mental health concerns. This article (a) reviews the increasing mental health needs of youth in the United States and (b) presents an appropriate role for school counselors in addressing students’ mental health needs with implications for policy and practice in the United States and abroad

Search for light bosons in decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for Evidence of the Type-III Seesaw Mechanism in Multilepton Final States in Proton-Proton Collisions at root s=13 TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for new phenomena with the M-T2 variable in the all-hadronic final state produced in proton-proton collisions at root s=13TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for Supersymmetry in pp Collisions at root s=13 TeV in the Single-Lepton Final State Using the Sum of Masses of Large-Radius Jets

Peer reviewe