3. The Education Program
The survey committee appointed to evaluate guidance service must be sure to examine
certain elements of the educational program even though they cannot be expected to
do a thorough evaluation of the entire program.
• To what extent do teachers seem to understand the basic needs of the students?
What are they doing to help their students satisfy these basic needs?
• Do teachers help students develop good work habits and efficient study skills? To
what extent do teachers help students develop proficiency in basic skill subjects?
• What are counselors doing to help teachers improve affective education as well as
student’s intellectual development? Who is helping teachers recognize, accept,
express and enjoy their own and their student’s feelings in daily living together
within their classroom?
4. Counseling
Inasmuch as he tends to be assigned more duties than he can perform adequately, a counselor
must continue to confront himself with these questions:
• Of all the services that I am asked to provide, which are most essential?
• Which can be provided only by a professional with my preparation?
• Which of the request should I ignore or refuse to do because they damage my personal
relationships with my students, teachers and parents?
5. The counselor may keep a log to determine whether he is using his time
appropriately.
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Individual counseling
Group counseling
Counseling-related activities
Consulting with teachers
Counseling with parents
Counseling parents
Leading parent-education groups
Arranging for referrals
Academic advising activities
Planning group-guidance activities
Conducting guidance activities
Providing placement services
Performing clerical duties
Doing committee work concerned with
school policies or curriculum
• Performing administrative duties
• Doing research and/or other evaluation
services
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6. For other services, the committee charged with responsibility for evaluation of guidance services
should obtain answers to the following questions:
Child Study
• What do the teachers feel they need to know about their students in order to teach them effectively.
• What additional information is needed by those who provide guidance services?
• To what extent are all the needs of these staff members and by child-study service?
Information Service
• For what questions do students want answers concerning themselves and their environment? Which
of these questions should be answered by parents? Which of those questions should be answered by
their parents?
• What materials are available for student’s use? Are the materials appropriate for their use? What
additional materials are needed?
• What proportion of the students actually uses the materials?
7. Orientation
• To what extent does the orientation program prepare students for their new school
experiences?
• How many students be encouraged to plan and revise the orientation program?
• Why is orientation in the new setting preferred over new orientation prior to the move to the
new setting
Career Development
• When do most students make their first career choice?
• What do counselors do to motivate students to accept responsibility for their own career
development?
• What proportion of the students who graduated from high school last year left school with
specific vocational and educational plans?
8. Follow-up Service
• What follow-up studies have been completed recently? What suggestions did you obtain for
improving guidance services? For improving the curriculum? How were these suggestions
used?
• What may be done to obtain responses from a more representative sample of former
students?
• What percentage of the former students who graduated five years ago implemented their
high school vocational plans?
Placement Services
• Who has been served by your cooperative education programs? What other students could profit from
them? How may these programs be changed to better serve college-bound students?
• How could summer and part-time employment be coordinated with cooperative education programs
more effectively to aid in the identification and development of salable skills for college-bound as well
as non-college-oriented students?
• What can be done to obtain more relevant part-time and summer employment?
9. Administration of Guidance Service
• Are the guidance positions clearly defined, and are compatible duties assigned to individual
workers? Do job descriptions include adequate definition of professional qualifications of
workers? Are staff members selected with care?
• Are members of the staff encouraged to share ideas, to grow on the job and to contribute to
the development of appropriate school policies?
• To what extent have individuals assumed responsibility for their own growth? How has the
administration encouraged this self-development?
11. Client’s goal for counseling:
The criteria
which they developed with their counselors’ assistance, to help them decide when
they had achieved goals; and the counselor’s notes to indicate the extent to which each client
had achieved his goals.
Sample Case Study:
A fourth-grade boy complained to his counselor about his teacher rejecting him and being
unfair to him. During the first counseling session he also questioned whether his parents
liked him as much as they did his older sister. Although the boy and the counselor were able
to define the first goal during the session, it took several sessions to help the boy do anything
more about other goals than to complain about his parents’ unfairness and his sister’s bossy
behavior.
12. Eventually the following goals for him were stated and accepted:
1. To tell his teacher how it hurts when he feels that he is rejected or treated unfairly
(“She will listen to me and not get mad”)
2. In the counselor’s office, and with the counselor’s help, to tell his parents how it hurts to believe
that they love his sister more than they love him, and how he would like their help in getting along
with his sister
(“They will listen, show me that they like me, and help me learn to get along my sister
better- to have fewer fights with her”)
3. To help him make at least one good friend at school and at least one who lives close to his house
(“Then these boys will choose me to play ball with them and teach me to play games better
than I do”)
13. The teacher not only listened to the boy but asked to sit on his counseling session in which
the boy learned to signal the teacher when he felt put down or rejected. Then the teacher
arranged for a conference with the counselor in which they discussed what made the child
react as he did, its impact on the teacher, and what each could do about it. His goals for
improving his relationships with his parents also were achieved. They did learn to give
him more individual attention and to enjoy him. With the counselor’s assistance in an
Adlerian type of family counseling and his parents’ use of the family council, the boy also
learned some new coping skills with his sister, and his sister learned to cope with him.
Although he made one good friend at school, he did not achieve his third goal as fully as
rest; he did not develop either his athletic skills or friend-making skills as fully as he
hoped.
