Got Counseling?

Counselors are school's Mr./Ms. Fix-It
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER

By now, high school seniors are getting themselves ready for college life. High school is fast becoming a memory. And the school counselors who masterminded the college admissions battle are only too glad to have a huge weight off their shoulders.

But their work is never really done.

"We fix everything here," said Amy Bria, school counselor at Rosa Parks High School in Paterson.

For four years, high school counselors are parents who advise on life and academic decisions without a parent's power to command. They are faculty members who proctor tests and visit classrooms without classrooms of their own. They are, in short, the essential but largely unnoticed cogs in a school's machinery.

And, at least until recently, in much of New Jersey they were more likely to be overlooked as a profession by the very students they nurtured academically. To renew interest in the profession and keep pace with industry changes, the state Department of Education in 2004 dropped a requirement that high school guidance counselors be current or former teachers in the schools in which they work.

"We were losing good people," said Mark McGrath, president of the New Jersey School Counselor Association. Now instead of teachers in the workforce studying to be counselors through night classes, college students with psychology and sociology backgrounds can go to graduate school and expect to start work as counselors straight out of the program, he said.

"There's been a minor spurt [in counselors]," added McGrath, who works in Lawrenceville. Indeed, the number of counselors in New Jersey saw a slight uptick in the past five years, rising to 2,702 during the 2006-07 school years, up from 2,512 in 2001-02 , according to the state Board of Education.

That is good news for North Jersey students, who already enjoy more attention from counselors than many of their peers across the state and nation.

Local high school guidance counselors serve just 220 students each, on average. Compare that with guidance counselors throughout New Jersey and the nation who divide their time among hundreds more students: 386 on average in New Jersey, and 488 nationwide.

The numbers point to a fact of life for high school guidance counselors: You have to learn to juggle and react.
(clip art to left courtesy of scoutbase.co.uk)
Of course, there's consulting on college applications and life after high school, but they also work as liaisons between parents and teachers, update academic records, perform a variety of administrative tasks, and, of course, bond with students. They also take over general faculty duties: Bria, for one, leads the National Honor Society and proctors tests.

But the job can change from hour to hour. During an interview in Bria's office, a teacher approached her with a discipline problem, and she agreed to see a female student who was acting out during lunch.

Added Bill Joosten, who has served as guidance counselor for more than 40 years, most recently at Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale: "You really can't do a lot of planning with all this stuff going on, because the minute you sit down to do something, someone's at your door and they need help."

E-mail: shih@northjersey.com