At California High School, we are striving to fully implement a comprehensive school counseling program as recommended by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), the Missouri School Counselor Association (MSCA), and the American School Counselor Association (ASCA). See below for an overview of each aspect of a comprehensive school counseling program.
The School Counseling Curriculum includes lessons presented to help students attain the desired Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) in the areas of social/emotional, academic and career development. The school counseling curriculum is systematically presented by school counselors in collaboration with teachers though K-12 classroom lessons or other learning activities.
CHS school counselors provide lessons, activities, and bulletin boards on self-efficacy, learning styles, career interest inventories, online safety, time management, coping skills, problem-solving skills, college and career path options, job seeking and skills, and more. We are always working and advocating to increase our time helping students attain the desired GLEs.
The Individual Student Planning (ISP) is a program component of the Missouri Comprehensive School Counseling Program (McSCP) that assists all students with educational/career planning, educational transitioning, and self-appraisal for decision making. ISP is vital to every student's college and career readiness development grades K-12.
The Individual Career & Academic Plan (ICAP) , is a plan of study to guide students through the coursework and activities for achieving personal career goals, post-secondary planning and providing individual pathway options. An ICAP is a multi-year process, beginning no later than the eighth grade, that intentionally guides students and families in the exploration of career, academic and multiple post-secondary opportunities to include direct access to the workforce, military, tech school/area career center, vocational training (apprenticeship), 2 year college, and 4 year college. An ICAP is a “roadmap” to help students develop the awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and skills to create their own meaningful pathways to be success ready graduates.
Our students' ICAPs can be found on their Google Classroom for their graduating class.
The ACADEMIC PLAN in Infinite Campus is another great resource for students and parents to map out their courses at CHS.
The school counselors should be available and responsive to special or unexpected needs of students and parents/guardians. Thus, the purpose of the Responsive Services Component is to work with students whose personal circumstances, concerns, or problems have the potential to interfere with healthy social/emotional, academic, and career development. Issues that students may face include; academic challenges, educational and career decision making, family loss, relationships, school attendance, stress, substance abuse, physical abuse and neglect, and suicide. As a result, there is continuing need for individual counseling, small group counseling, crisis intervention, consultation, and referral. The Responsive Services component also supports the activities in the School Counseling Curriculum and Individual Student Planning components.
As students are supported in overcoming barriers to their social/emotional, academic, and career development, parent/guardian involvement is essential. This may come in the form of referring their children for assistance, working with school counselors to identify issues of concern, giving permission for needed services, and providing help in resolving issues.
Responsive services are implemented through the following: individual counseling, small group counseling, crisis intervention, consultation, and referral. Students may ask to meet with us at any time and if we are not available, we will meet with them as soon as possible. Should a crisis arise, we address the crisis immediately.
The Missouri Comprehensive School Counseling Program System Support component contains the management activities and services required to effectively support a district's comprehensive school counseling program. The system support component is implemented through activities such as program management, evaluation, professional development, staff and community relations, consultation & collaboration, committee participation, community outreach, program advocacy, and school support.
At CHS, we are always working to improve our program and reduce the number of barriers to implementing our program. To do so, we utilize needs surveys, data from lessons, meetings with administration, professional development, monthly district counselor meetings, monthly time on task analyses, yearly program evaluations, yearly school board reports, and more.