Guidance Counselors Are Underfunded, Crucial. Teenagers make bad choices. Honestly, who doesn’t? For adolescents, however, who are armed with new responsibilities, opportunities, and bodies they are almost inevitably unprepared to deal with, the wrong decision can have serious, life-altering effects. For low-income adolescents who lack the safety net that comes with privilege, the wrong decisions can be catastrophic.
Students who drop out of high school or never graduate from college are, often without knowing it, setting themselves up to earn half as much as a college graduate does. The significance of counseling is under-recognized by the public. Thankfully, leaders in the education community are increasingly recognizing the pivotal role of the school counselor in the lives of students, particularly low-income and first-generation ones who might not have any other adult in their lives who applied to and attended college. The third item is where advising comes in.
Ratios are not the only problem, however. Mental Health In Schools: A Hidden Crisis Affecting Millions Of Students : NPR Ed. Part One in an NPR Ed series on mental health in schools. You might call it a silent epidemic. Up to one in five kids living in the U.S. shows signs or symptoms of a mental health disorder in a given year. So in a school classroom of 25 students, five of them may be struggling with the same issues many adults deal with: depression, anxiety, substance abuse.
And yet most children — nearly 80 percent — who need mental health services won't get them. Whether treated or not, the children do go to school. Experts say schools could play a role in identifying students with problems and helping them succeed. Educators face the simple fact that, often because of a lack of resources, there just aren't enough people to tackle the job.
"No one ever asked me" Katie is one of those kids. She's 18 now. "At recess, I didn't have friends to play with," she recalls. We're not using Katie's last name to protect her privacy. She says that in the span of a few months, she went from honor roll to failing. Technology could kill 5 million jobs by 2020 - Jan. 18, 2016. Developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology, would disrupt the business world in a similar way to previous industrial revolutions, the World Economic Forum said in a report published Monday. Administrative and white collar office jobs are most at risk from a "fourth industrial revolution," the forum said on the eve of its annual meeting in Davos this week. The impact of the tech revolution is the central topic of this year's gathering of the world's leaders and major business figures in the Swiss mountain resort. The forum surveyed senior executives from over 350 of the biggest companies in 15 of the world's major emerging and developed economies.
Together, those economies account for 65% of the global workforce. Related: Smart robots could soon steal your job It found that as many as 7.1 million jobs in the world's richest countries could be lost through redundancy and automation. Investing in education and adult learning programs is a good place to start. Falling completion rates may jeopardize institutional value. Dive Brief: A new study reveals that less than 50% of first-time college students graduate within six years, a statistic that contrasts dramatically with the U.S. Department of Education's guidelines for families on how to find a quality college or university. More than 20% of students who use loans to pay for school are unable to repay them, a performance metric which has federal and state implications in funding and ranking for public institutions.
To improve outcomes, college leaders will have to find a careful balance between recruiting diverse sets of students with varying levels of readiness and sacrificing outcomes, or increasing standards and losing diversity and inclusion metrics. Dive Insight: Colleges and universities appear to be in a no-win situation when it comes to performance outcomes and standards set by federal and state oversight bodies. Recommended Reading Washington Post: The real crisis in higher education is about a lot more than debt Top Image Credit: Getty Images.
College enrollment to double in next decade. Dive Brief: A recent study suggests that the number of students in colleges and universities across the globe will double by 2025, which could have interesting impications in the U.S., given reports of declining enrollment at colleges nationwide. With endowment funds headed for a second-straight year of bad returns, and public appropriations decreasing, the pressure will be for colleges to increase international and out-of-state recruitment to aid in stabilizing revenue. These demands will require schools to become more aggressive in promoting cultural tolerance, and technological advancement in teaching and service delivery. Dive Insight: An increase in global enrollment will present both opportunities and challenges for U.S. campuses dealing with dwindling feeder populations. It is a tall task by any measure, and part of the reason the college presidency is fading as a desired position.
Recommended Reading Firetail: Class of 2030 - Which universities will rise and how will they do it? The Counselor's Role: Scaffolded Support In and Outside of the Classroom. For most of our students, graduating from college, let alone high school, is a new mindset. Most of our underserved student population is coming in with limited academic and social-emotional skills. Since we're an Early College high school, the counselors at Trinidad Garza understand that our students need to be equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to thrive not only in their high school classes, but also in their college courses and environment.
In bridging this gap, we've developed support systems to prepare students emotionally and academically. Counselors use the daily study hall periods embedded into the master schedule to offer one of three supports, depending on our students' needs: Whole-class guidance lessons Small-group work One-on-one counseling 1. There are seven core guidance lessons that counselors teach every year during study hall. 1. Inform Your Lessons With Surveys We administer a survey to parents, teachers, and students during the first six weeks of school. What role does SEL play in whole child teaching? School counselor discusses how whole child teaching builds a strong foundation for success. The success of a school, district or educational program is often measured by how well students score on academic tests or whether they graduate on time. But as a school counselor, my experience says that these big-picture measures of success don’t tell the whole story.
Every day there are countless non-academic lessons occurring in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias and counseling offices, which contribute to those “big picture” outcomes. I’m talking about those social and emotional lessons that provide the skills for students to get along with their peers, make responsible decisions and form bonds with their teachers. As a school counselor, I use this philosophy every day. Assessing needCreating individualized treatment plans with clear goalsIdentifying specific strategies to help students reach these goals To do this, I start with an eight-item social-emotional learning assessment. CCP- LibGuides at INFOhio. Plug Into Technology to Find the Best College Match. Factor Data In Your College Search Next » 1 of 11 (Hero Images/Getty Images) When it comes to settling on a college out of the more than 4,000 degree-granting U.S. institutions, the task may seem impossible.
College hopefuls can work with these nine pieces of technology to make a personalized college short list, explore a campus and connect with students, all without leaving the couch. Next: Tune Into the Netflix of College Matching.