Elementary Counselor

The Comprehensive School Guidance and Counseling Program is an important part of New Bloomfield Elementary, contributing to the school's total educational program. It is developmental by design and includes purposeful and sequential activities organized and implemented by a certified, professional school counselor with the support of teachers, administrators, students, and parents.

Goals of the Elementary School Counselor

• To help children understand themselves and others.
• To prevent problems from developing by providing children the opportunity to learn skills for successful personal/social, academic, and career development and opportunity to practice these skills.
• To provide personal and social, academic, and career education activities.
• To provide student support as they grow, develop, and change; and to provide appropriate interventions when students experience difficult life events.
• To coordinate or facilitate efforts of parents, teachers, administrators, and others to best serve individual student needs.
• To provide crisis intervention when necessary.
• To help identify children with special needs.
• To help develop plans, when applicable, based on each child's strengths, weaknesses, and needs.

Services Provided by an Elementary School Counselor

• Consulting with teachers, parents, administrators and others
• Listening in an effort to resolve conflicts
• Helping parents understand how to help their children
• Referring students to outside referral agencies when appropriate
• Helping students learn responsibility by becoming aware of the consequences of behavior
• Implementing a Comprehensive School Guidance and Counseling Program through:
  • Guidance Curriculum: Structured classroom and group activities, K-5, teaching competencies through a variety of lessons and methods in three major areas of development: Personal and Social, Academic, and Career.
  • Individual Planning: Through education and by providing opportunities for exploration in interests, goals, and abilities, helping students form a foundation for middle school and beyond when they are developing education and career plans for the future.
  • System Support: Activities where the counselor manages and maintains the counseling program through program evaluation, professional development, data collection, advisory committees, and outreach to the community.
  • Responsive Services: Services designed to meet the immediate needs and concerns of students through counseling, consultation, or referral. This is available to all students and can be initiated by students and others personally invested in their lives. Responsive services are delivered through the following strategies:
    • Individual Counseling
    • Crisis Counseling
    • Small Group counseling
    • Consultation with parents and teachers

Resource: http://www.cdc.gov/parents -The CDC website provides a wealth of great information for parents: developmental milestones, safety in the home and community, and many other topics on raising healthy children.

Please feel free to contact me for additional resources, or if you have any questions or concerns.

Siobhanna Mayotte, Elementary School Counselor

(573) 491-3700 ext 226