Guidance Counsellor

Approved: March 21, 2016

Position: Guidance Counsellor

Reports to: School Principal

Policy: The Board of Trustees of Prairie Rose School Division provides guidance counsellors to schools to provide services to students to promote personal well-being and to work collaboratively/consultatively with staff to help all students achieve academically, physically, developmentally, socially, emotionally, and behaviourally.

Scope of Activities:

The first priority of the guidance counsellor is to ensure that students perform their best academically.

Guidance counsellors provide a continuum of preventative, developmental, and intervention counselling services within the division, school, and classroom setting through:

Working collaboratively and cooperatively with other counsellors and student services personnel;
Collaboration with the principal to create a counselling plan based on school and students’ needs; reflective of the allocation of guidance time within the school;
Designing intervention programs through consultation and collaboration with teachers, administrators, and other support personnel that are cognizant of the developmental level of the student(s) and;
Developing objectives for the student(s) and the strategies to be learned or concepts to be developed.

Guidance counsellors continue to improve one’s own skills through professional development, maintain guidance records as required by provincial and divisional policy, and assume other duties as assigned by the school administrator or Director of Student Services with a focus on:

Counselling:

To provide effective and timely direct services to individual students and small groups with:

High risk factors for and low resiliency to social, personal, or educational difficulties;
Symptoms that may affect attendance and success at school;
Individual education plans, and;
Crisis counselling or conflict resolution needs.

To provide essential services to address immediate concerns related to existing difficulties of students and;
To recognize one’s own boundaries of competence and provide only those services and use only those techniques for which one is qualified by training or experience. School counsellors shall make appropriate referrals to external agencies, other professional services, and school division staff when their professional assistance cannot adequately meet students’ needs.

Prevention:

To avert known risks by creating awareness and providing information in areas with potential to affect school success;
To provide early intervention and support for student achievement and student wellbeing where difficulties have the potential to escalate and affect school success;
To promote, plan, and implement effective school-based prevention programs, social/personal management activities, and decision making activities based on the needs of the school and staff professional learning related to student wellbeing; such as:

Kids in the Know
Mental Health Awareness Week
Suicide Prevention Day
Sexual & Reproductive Health Week
GSAs
Peer Helpers, TADD, SWAT
Drug Prevention Coordination
Social Skills Groups
Self-Regulation
Bully Prevention

Guidance Education:

To collaborate with and support teachers to plan for implementation and instruction in program delivery within the personal and social development areas e.g. Health curriculum, Family Studies, Drug & Alcohol Programming and other programming focused on social issues or social and personal skill development;
To provide resources to staff that assist in the implementation of curricula
To support students with personal development with an emphasis on resiliency development and mental health promotion;
To support students with social development; teaching and modelling social skills;
To assist students in personalizing their school experience (course selection, school involvement) and;
To advocate for students in areas such as discipline, educational difficulties, and emotional/social needs and to act as a mediator between student and the school community.

Coordination:

To work in collaboration and cooperation with parents/guardians, classroom teachers, resource teachers, clinicians, administration, outside agencies, and the Director of Student Services in response to students’ academic, social, behavioural, emotional, and developmental needs;
To facilitate new student integration into the school environment and students’ successful transition from one level of education to the next; including, Children in Care registration and case management;
To support coordinated student support team activities including generating IEPs, safety plans, and guiding Behaviour Intervention Plans (BIP); acting as case manager for students facing behavioural challenges and;
To participate and consult as a member of school support team to ensure responsiveness to equity and diversity issues; relationships, anger management, behaviour management, bullying, self-knowledge, personal safety, decision-making, drugs/alcohol, and healthy lifestyles.