Perspectives on Innovation in the School Counseling Profession
We were visiting recently with a creative, energetic student who was taking her first graduate course, “Introduction to School Counseling.” She spoke first about the bewildering array of professional bureaucracies associated with school counseling. She wondered aloud how much benefit school counselors and the people they serve derive from these bureaucracies. She posed the questions: “What gets in the way of school counseling’s future?” “How can graduate students, before they get mired in professional bureaucracy, help school counseling evolve?” “How can graduate students help to invent effective, interesting, and creative solutions to the social and psychological challenges young people face in the 21st century?”
We were initially taken aback by the seeming arrogance of this graduate student and defended much of the organizational structure that embodies school counseling as a profession. After a bit of reflection, however, we recognized the value of her questions, and we asked ourselves: “How can graduate students who have relatively little investment in school counseling’s status quo contribute to the evolution of the profession?” How can practicing school counselors contribute to the evolution of the profession?