Over the years, this column has offered up “3 Things Students Wish Teachers Knew,” “3 Things Parents Wish Teachers Knew,” and “5 Things Teachers Wish Parents Knew.” Recently, it was called to my attention that I have never written about what school counselors might like readers to know about their profession.
I’ve spent a great deal of time this year meeting and talking with school counselors, and I can attest that they have a lot of wisdom to share about how to keep students healthy, happy and successful.
School counselors manage the intersection of multiple, disparate priorities: students’ academic performance and their mental health, parents’ dreams for their kids and teachers’ requirements for their students, decisions about the present and plans for the future. As challenging as this task is, daily life in this intersection is also increasingly demanding. According to the recommendation of the American School Counselor Association, the student-to-counselor ratio should go no higher than 250 to 1. According to the latest data, however, all but three states, New Hampshire, Vermont and Wyoming, exceed the recommended ratio. Nationally, the average student-to-school-counselor ratio is 491 to 1, but the ratio hits a high of 941 to 1 in Arizona.
[For more of this story, written by Jessica Lahey, go to http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/...?ref=health&_r=0]
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