Title: Middle Schooling Counseling: Touching the Souls of Adolescents
Abstract: During my first year as a middle school counselor, I learned quickly that feelings, friendships, acceptance, popularity, sexuality, and self-awareness were important to adolescents. From my perspective, these are all related to experiences. The soul (mind, emotions, and will) is very fragile during this developmental stage. To make my school counseling program valuable and relevant to students, I realized the need to connect with their souls, and a strong part of their lives was music. I have always enjoyed music and believe it is a universal communication tool. Music can affect feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. I began listening to the same music that my students did, and I decided to center my classroom guidance and groups around the lyrics of the songs they enjoyed. I recorded and played rap, alternative, rock, country, rhythm and blues, and pop songs. I used their music to introduce my classroom guidance lessons and to serve as a foundation for the life skills I taught. The students were exposed to a variety of musical styles, and they learned to listen to the meaning of the words. This led to great discussions about academic success, family values, accepting differences, making good choices, helping others, establishing quality relationships, and making career choices. In middle school, counselors' responsibilities include conducting classroom guidance, facilitating small groups, and counseling individuals. Another critical responsibility is helping students to resolve crises. Adolescents are notorious for their drama and illogical thinking. Adolescents are experiencing physical and emotional change and upheaval, and they often act without thinking about the consequences of their actions. I have become a strong advocate for rational emotive behavior therapy. I began my school counseling career at the elementary level, and after coming to middle school, I realized that this level offered the best opportunities to practice real counseling. Developmentally, adolescents are cognitively able to understand and analyze behaviors of themselves and others. Another important factor that encourages and supports real counseling is that counseling in the middle school is not viewed punitively or for crazy adolescents. Each year when I go into classes to introduce myself and explain my counseling program, I tell the students that I believe my job is to be a friend to them. They see me as their advocate, not adversary. One example of advocacy was when a teacher asked me to come into his class and help a student. The student refused to talk to him, although she was sitting at her desk weeping. I walked to her desk and quietly asked her to come with me. She shook her head; so I gently touched her elbow and said Come on, and she did. I mostly listened to her current problem and gave her some encouragement. She came to see me on her own a couple of times in the next month, and eventually she revealed that there was physical abuse in the home. …
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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