A comprehensive school counseling program serves to support and enhance the overall school mission by promoting academic achievement, career and higher education planning and student personal and social development.

Historically, school counseling programs spent an inordinate amount of time responding to specific crises of a small percentage of students or engaged almost exclusively in academic advising and college placement services. Today's state-of-the-art school counseling programs continue to provide these services while also endeavoring to directly deliver additional counseling services to all students in the school population.

An optimal school counseling program involves the school counselor in working collaboratively with parents, teachers, students, and administrators to ensure the optimal development of every student's academic and personal/social potential. Such a program involves four (4) primary components (links below each component are to other pages on this site):

1. Guidance Curriculum: Structured lesson plans and group activities delivered via K-12 classrooms to help all students in developing the necessary skills and competencies for success academically and socially (e.g., study skills, career awareness, conflict resolution, cultural sensitivity, understanding self and others, responsibility, etc.
   
   • Guidance: Programs Activites and Lesson Plans

2. Individual Student Planning: School counselors provide direct services to individual students to assist them in developing academic and career goals. Such services include academic advising, career planning, and university/college counseling.
   
   • University/College Counseling
   • Career Counseling

3. Responsive Services: As the school's professional with formal training in both mental health and education, counselors respond to immediate student needs necessitated by critical life events, situations, and conditions in their lives. This role is compounded in the international school where the counselor may often function as the only mental health resource in the region for parents and students experiencing interpersonal crisis or stressful events.
   
   • Personal/Social Counseling: Individual & small group
   • Crisis Intervention
   
   
4. Consultation & Systems Support: The school counselor provides consultation services to parents and teachers to assist them in resolving the academic and social adjustment problems of students. Counselors also work with teachers, parents and administrators in developing and implementing preventive programs and services such as: parent education, classroom behavior management training, international student transition programs, etc..
   
   • Consultation
   • An archive of guidance resources and material

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