Northland Schools k-12 Counseling Program

VISION

The Northland School District's K-12 school counseling program empowers all students to gain the skills needed for academic, social-emotional, and career development that will serve them to be confident, productive, and conscientious citizens for their entire lives.

MISSION

Our mission as school counselors within the Northland School District is to provide a data-informed comprehensive school counseling program that supports academic, career, and social-emotional development for all students. With collaboration at the forefront of our program, we work with students, educators, families, and community members to develop equitable opportunities for our students to become empowered life-long learners. Counselors and staff will work to develop a culture within the school setting that promotes positive achievement, attendance, and behavior while continuously evaluating the program for improvements.

VALUES AND BELIEFS

At Northland Schools, we value equity and opportunity for ALL students. We cherish relationships and pride in the program and culture that is created within our schools. We also value accountability, responsibility, and grit so each member of our community continues to improve and better themselves in this lifelong journey.

As school counselors, we believe each and every student has the abilities, skills, or characteristics to be high achievers. That it is our responsibility to serve ALL students while empowering them to formulate their own ideas and stand up for what they believe. To effectively serve the students in reaching their potential, our data-informed school counseling program must be recognized as an asset to the students. We are advocates, collaborators, leaders, and change agents that create equitable opportunities. We believe that we hold ourselves responsible in collaborating with all other resources and stakeholders to continually assess the program to ensure validity in regard to student success. We adhere to ASCA's ethical standards and mindsets and behaviors as non-negotiables within our program. Lastly, we believe that professional development is a never-ending process. To serve our students to the best of our abilities, we must be at our best.

ABOUT OUR PROGRAM: HOW WE BUILT ITS FOUNDATION

The mission, vision, and beliefs that ground our program were created through a multi-step, collaborative process involving school counselors from all K-12 levels. Over a series of meetings, our team discussed and brainstormed what is most important to us and how we see our comprehensive school counseling program creating positive impact in the lives of our students, in our schools, and in our entire K-12 district.

We started by identifying the beliefs that guide our work and then translating those beliefs into what we envision for the future in the mission and vision statements. Several stakeholders were consulted with throughout this process, including administrators, social workers and school psychologists, other student services professionals, teachers, students, parents, the advisory council members and district leaders representing all K-12 developmental levels. Below are summaries of the key elements we used to guide our work.

ASCA themes

All four ASCA themes play into at least one part of our beliefs, mission, and vision statements and the process for creating them:

Leadership

• ASCA (2019) states that "having a vision is characteristic of effective leadership" (p. 31), and that sharing that vision with followers motivates them to work together towards a shared purpose. Our district-wide school counseling team utilizes our foundational beliefs, mission, and vision to motivate us all to accomplish shared goals.

Advocacy

• "School counselors advocate for student success by creating a vision statement describing a future world where student outcomes are successfully achieved," describes the ASCA National Model (2019, p. 31). Our guiding statements enable us as school counselors to advocate for our students at all K-12 levels.

Systemic Change

• The ASCA National Model (2019) states that school counselors "promote systemic change by communicating the vision to stakeholders and designing and implementing a program that brings the vision to life" (p. 31). Our vision statement is grounded in empowering all students to achieve successful outcomes, thus challenging us to make changes necessary in our current systems to accomplish our future goals.

Collaboration

• None of this would be possible without collaboration. Dollarhide & Saginak (2017) recommend that school counselors "facilitate discussion, ensuring that all stakeholder voices are heard, understood, and considers until all members agree on the beliefs, vision statement, mission statement, and program goals." They also point out that collaboration is necessary to make sure that these grounding statements align with those of the school and district, and they highlight the necessity of including stakeholders that represent all cultures that make up the school population in these conversations. A diverse array of stakeholders were involved in every step of our process to create our beliefs, mission, and vision statements. Many different perspectives were considered, and ample time was set aside to have meaningful conversations across differences and to clarify how we could all come together to agree on what a shared future should look like. It was not easy, but it was crucial in this process.

How did we create the vision/mission/beliefs statements?

We started by identifying our beliefs.

"Beliefs matter. Beliefs are personal and individual and are derived from our backgrounds, culture, and experiences. Beliefs drive our behaviors" (ASCA, 2019, p. 29).

Clarifying our values and beliefs about school counseling, the educational process, and our role in supporting our students was an important first step. Each of us came into our work with our own experiences, perspectives, and personal beliefs, so we collaborated and brainstormed to identify beliefs that we all have in common.

We reached an understanding of each other's beliefs by engaging in conversation about the following topics (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2017):

• Students, families, teachers, the entire educational process

• Student achievement and learning styles

• Preparing students for a global society

• Developing productive, engaged citizens

• School’s role in supporting student needs

• Role of counseling program in supporting the mission of the school

• Educational reform and counselor’s role

• Role of stakeholders in the counseling program

We also used the following questions, recommended by Dollarhide & Saginak (2017), to facilitate the discussion process:

• What do we believe about the ability of all students to achieve?

• How do we address the developmental needs of all students?

• What is the school counselor’s role as an advocate for every student?

• Who do we believe is involved in the planning, managing, delivery, and evaluation of program activities?

• How are data used to inform program decisions?

• How do ethical standards guide the work of school counselors?

Finally, we made sure that our beliefs were grounded in the ASCA Mindsets & Beliefs for School Counselors (2019), which are listed on the "Define" page of this website.

After reaching consensus on our belief statement, we collaborated with stakeholders representing diverse cultural backgrounds to review the beliefs and make sure they were in line with the overarching beliefs of the school, district, and surrounding community.

We used our beliefs to guide our vision statement.

“The school counseling vision statement communicates what school counselors hope to see for students five to ten years in the future” (ASCA, 2019, p. 30)

We utilized the following characteristics of an effective vision statement as described in the ASCA National Model (2019) and by Dollarhide & Saginak (2017) to inform how we wrote it.

• Represents a "preferred or desired future" (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2017)

• Offers a "rich picture of what success means" (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2017)

• Promotes systemic change by focusing on equitable, inclusive student access to opportunities

• States the best possible outcomes desired for all students

As with the beliefs statement, our vision statement was reviewed by a diverse set of stakeholders before we reached a final draft. In particular, we made sure that the statement aligns with the vision statements of our respective individual schools and the district's vision statement.

Finally, our mission statement describes how the vision statement comes to life.

"A mission statement provides the focus and direction to reach the vision" (ASCA, 2019, p. 31)

We utilized ASCA's (2019) guidelines on an effective mission statement to guide our drafting process:

• Describes a clear focus to reach the vision

• Outlines the school counseling program's overarching focus and purpose

• Emphasizes "equity, access, and success for every student" (p. 31)

• Focuses on long-range results desired for all students

Our mission statement was reviewed by multiple stakeholders and like with the beliefs and vision, we ensured that it aligns with the overarching missions of our district and schools.