College and career counseling is essential for students to
gain equal access to information and schools must be creative in finding ways for all students to receive
post-secondary counseling. It cannot be
done in college prep classes only and cannot begin during the senior year. Students and families need to have access to
information earlier and earlier so they are aware and can, with the help of the
school, prepare for college or the workforce after high school. Being a former school counselor, and I will
always consider myself a school counselor, my colleague introduces me as “a recovering
School Counselor; it’s a 12-step process”, I understand the demands of the
job. It is up to us to make a difference
and advocate for our students.
With the testing requirements, counselors are already bogged
down with administrative duties along with other non-counseling duties. It is important that administrators realize that
counselors can positively affect students’ post-secondary aspirations and
attainment. To do this, the counseling
department priorities need to change.
Counselors need to spend more on direct time with students and less on administrative
and non-counseling duties.
The Ohio Department of Education in partnership with the
Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation and Ohio Board of Regents has
developed Career Connections. The Career Connections Framework provides an overview to
school districts for developing implementation plans for career
exploration. A school district Career Connections plan includes strategies
across grades K-12 that support the career development of all students.
Tools and Approaches for
College and Career Advising
Career Advising should begin in the middle school years, if
not earlier. The Career Connections
Framework provides a model Student Success Plan for grades 6-12. The model plan includes Tools and
Assessments, Student Activities, School Activities and Resources using the
OhioMeansJobs K-12 tool. This model plan
serves as a comprehensive career development experience for students and can be
customized by districts. Review the
Student Success Plan here.
OhioMeansJobs
K-12 is a no-cost, on-line career development tool. This tool replaces the previous OCIS tool
that school counselors utilized for career development. This tool allows counselors, teachers,
parents and students to explore career interests, research career options and
evaluate education and training programs.
Watch this video for information on this free, helpful tool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbqwVctlLQs
I hope you find time to look over these resources. I will share other methods I have used at the high school
level but I wanted to first share these resources as they are very useful to
the busy school counselor.
