What is a High School Guidance Counselor?
A high school guidance counselor is a highly educated professional who works in high schools, providing guidance and emotional support to students. Guidance counselors in the United States today are specialized in their field, and in most states, they do not work as classroom teachers like they often used to.
Since 2004, all K-12 students in the United States have had guaranteed access to guidance counselors. The main purpose of the high school guidance counselor is to help ensure each student reaches his or her full potential. This is why this profession plays a important role in the public education system in the United States. The position of high school guidance counselor is different and separate from that of school psychologist.
What Does a High School Guidance Counselor Do?
The field of school counseling has changed quite dramatically in nature and scope over the past two decades. High school guidance counselors certainly still do the things we all imagine they do, such as helping students choose and change courses, but they also have a wide range of responsibilities outside of those more traditional duties.
Their responsibilities fall into the broad categories of program development, management, and delivery (mostly direct services with students but also indirect students for students).
Direct Students Services
The vast majority of a high school guidance counselor’s time is typically occupied by direct services with students. These direct services involve in-person interaction with students. Some of the most common direct service duties include:
- Assessing each student and directly addressing their specific needs
- Providing guidance to students who go to them with both academic and personal concerns
- Helping students choose their high school courses
- Helping students make plans and set goals for their careers
- Helping students apply to college or trade school
- Helping students who are experiencing problems such as bullying
- Providing psychological counseling for students
- Assisting students in developing their communication, organizational, and coping strategies
- Assisting students experiencing problems such as bullying.
Indirect Student Services
Indirect services for students is another area of responsibility. Some of these indirect services can include collaborating with other educators, teachers, and parents, as well as providing referrals.
Developing School Counseling Programs
High school guidance counselors are required to create comprehensive school counseling programs. These programs must teach student various competencies and focus on student outcomes. They must create vision statements that set out what they want to future of student outcomes to look like. Program goals and mission statements for the school are also required to be created by high school guidance counselors.
Management and Assessment
In the area of management, high school guidance counselors are required to develop annual agreements with school administrators, carry out school counseling program assessments and school counselor competency assessments. Taking part in advisory councils and administering annual and weekly calendars are other responsibilities.
Why Do We Need High School Guidance Counselors?
The importance of the high school guidance counselor cannot be overstated. They provide integral support and services to students and the school community as a whole. High school guidance counselors provide vital assistance to students in the areas of career planning, emotional/social development, and academic achievement. These professionals are necessary for ensuring that students become well-adjusted and productive adults.
Each high school’s education team needs high school guidance counselors in order to function as it should and provide the best possible quality education and experience to students. Without high school guidance counselors, students would not have the guidance and support they need in navigating the difficult path that high school can often be and many of them could easily fall through the cracks.
Having high school guidance counselors helps to give every student a significantly better chance at success not only in school but also life. Adolescents need someone who they can turn to and trust to ask for advice.
What are the Requirements to Become a High School Guidance Counselor?
Educational Requirements
High school guidance counselors are generally required to have a master’s degree in school counseling. This degree usually takes between two and three years, and programs include both classroom instruction and practical experience. Supervised fieldwork in a school is a requirement. Each state has its own education requirements for licensing as a high school guidance counselor.
Each school counseling educational program is different and has its own curriculum, but there are certain subject areas that are common in most of these programs. These include:
- Developmental psychology: Developmental psychology is the study of how we develop and grow during childhood and adulthood. This includes cognitive, social, physical, intellectual, emotional, and other aspects.
- Counseling techniques: You will learn about counseling techniques and strategies to use in your career as a high school guidance counselor.
- Educational research: You are likely to learn about how to design and conduct educational research. This will involve how to understand the findings of research and put them into practice in your practice.
- Psychology of learning: Learning about the psychology of learning involves exploring learning disabilities and differentiation strategies, as well as language acquisition.
- Multicultural and diverse counseling: You may also learn about how students’ diverse backgrounds need to be taken into account when developing your approaches and strategies.
- Crisis intervention: You will learn about how crisis and trauma situations are dealt with. Assessment of crisis or trauma situations and intervention and response strategies are part of this.
- Testing and assessment: You will need to learn about how to identify and assess students who might have behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, and other challenges.
Licensure Requirements
Licensure requirements vary from state to state. A master’s degree in school counseling, a practicum, and an exam are often required. In states where a master’s degree is not required, another degree (such as a specific bachelor’s degree) will be. There are certain states in which between one and two years of teaching experience or other types of specific experience is also a requirement.
Accredited school counseling programs should involve practical experience components that satisfy the licensing requirements of the state. The specific degree needed for licensure depends on the state in which you wish to practice.
It is recommended that you do research on those requirements before starting on your path of education and training. In many states, successful completion of a written examination is another requirement for licensure.
What is an Online School Counseling Degree?
An online school counseling degree program is a viable option for people hoping for careers as high school guidance counselors who have barriers preventing them from physically attending college for this training.
An online school counseling degree will give you the knowledge and skills needed to be a professional in this field while you enjoy the flexibility of living far away from the college at which you study. You will need to complete an internship placement as part of the program. Try to find a college that helps in the process of finding a place where you can do your internship.
You need to find out the requirements for school counseling licensure in your state before looking for an online school counseling program. When choosing an online master’s degree in school counseling program, you must make sure that it is properly accredited so that taking it will put you in a position to seek licensure to practice as a school counselor in your state.
What Skills and Traits are Needed to be a High School Guidance Counselor?
A successful and fulfilling career as a high school guidance counselor requires a variety of skills and personality traits. These include:
Communication and Interpersonal Skills
- High school guidance counselors must listen attentively and have the speaking skills necessary to communicate with students, teachers, administrators, and parents.
- These professionals are required to create an enduring sense of trust with students and parents.
- High school guidance counselors must collaborate with parents, teachers, and administrators.
Planning Skills
- These professionals must help students create plans for their academic and working futures.
Counseling Skills
- High school guidance counselors counsel students on both academic and personal levels.
- These professionals help students make decisions about their academic and career goals.
Assessment Skills
- High school guidance counselors assess student aptitude and interests by way of a variety of methods.
- These professionals identify and report possible neglect or abuse cases.
Administrative Skills
- High school guidance counselors must keep and maintain accurate and insightful records on the students with whom they work.
Personality Traits
- Compassion and empathy
- Patience
- A desire to help young people
What are the Pros of Being a High School Guidance Counselor?
There are several benefits of being a high school guidance counselor. Let’s go over them below:
Emotional Fulfillment
- Being a high school guidance counselor is an emotionally fulfilling career path for people to whom it is suited. You will have the chance to speak and listen to students and help them decide on the best career path.
- You will also help them through the personal and social problems that often accompany adolescence.
Job Stability
- Having a position as a high school guidance counsel is a stable and highly respected job.
- High school guidance counselors enjoy an attractive salary. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, school counselors had a median salary of $63,090 in 2021.
- It is believed that school counselors will be in greater demand in the future.
- High school guidance counselors have a wide variety of transferable skills.
Work Environment
- High school guidance counselors work in a school environment, making the work environment relatively easy to predict.
- Guidance counselors often have their own offices within the school. Positions in both public and private schools are available. You will work among other professionals, such as fellow guidance counselors and educators.
Work-life Balance
- As schools generally do not operate in the summer, you may have a large proportion of the summer months off.
- As employees of a school, high school guidance counselors (like teachers) should expect to have reasonably predictable work hours. High school guidance counselors might have an advantage over teachers in this area because they will probably not need to prepare traditional lesson plan materials on a daily basis.
What are the Cons of Being a High School Guidance Counselor?
Like any other profession, the path of being a high school guidance counselor does have some disadvantages.
- It may not pay as highly as jobs for equally qualified people in the private sector. In other words, people who have spent an equal amount of time in college but studying in a different field might make significantly more money.
- It can have a high level of stress. The degree of this will likely depend on the character of the specific school in which you work. If there is a high incidence of emotional and social issues among the students of the school where you work, you might find that you experience a higher level of pressure and stress.
- It can be emotionally taxing to deal with students’ distressing emotional or family problems and cases of abuse and neglect. As mentioned in the earlier point, certain schools might be more challenging in this respect than others.
- Some schools may have physical environments that are not as pleasant and comfortable as others.
- You may find it difficult to feel successful in your job when you are not able to help a student in as meaningful a way as you would like.
What is the Job Outlook for High School Guidance Counselors?
High school guidance counselors have a promising job outlook. According to BLS, the demand for high school guidance counselors is expected to increase. The 2023-33 job growth rate was pegged at 4 percent, which is faster than average.
As school counselors require master’s degrees in most states, this profession requires a high level of education. Once you have that education, you are automatically highly competitive in your field, especially given the mentioned strong job growth rate.
High school guidance counseling is a specialized field with highly educated and trained professionals. Once you get your education and licensure in the field, you should be in an excellent position to enjoy a long, successful, and fulfilling career.
What Professions are Similar to High School Guidance Counselor?
There are a number of professions that have some similarities to that of high school guidance counselor including following:
Career Counselors
Career counselors are similar to high school guidance counselors in several ways. While they do not work with youth but rather adults, they do help people figure out what they are good at and what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Like high school guidance counselors, career counselors need a high level of empathy and understanding.
School Psychologists
Like high school guidance counselors, school psychologists help students deal with difficult personal and emotional problems. They need the same high-level interpersonal and communication (especially listening) skills, and they require empathy and compassion.