Guidance Counselor

 

As I recall, these were the individuals who were to guide you through your public schooling. A guidance counselor is a professional who helps students with academic planning, career exploration, and social-emotional support in schools and colleges. They assist students with choosing classes, applying to college, and developing future goals, while also providing support for personal challenges and ensuring students have the resources they need to succeed.

The parent/teacher conference was to give observations of their child(ren) in a class of 20 kids who sat quietly all day with being instructed by one woman on various subjects of history, science, arithmetic, reading and writing with a dabbling in art and music until the days break for lunch or recess were taken as we all lined up following instructions. Discipline issues usually meant pointing out the offender to shame in front of the other classmates or in extreme disruption sent to the principal office for punishment.

The teacher would go over the report cards sent out quarterly for the parents to review and sign (unless you knew how to duplicate a signature with artistic skills) and suggest the home assist in homework. They judge the child on attendance, behavior, social interaction, health and psychology (though not trained in either). How well do you know your kid?

The public school system is based on scores. If you earn enough passing on grades from the teacher, you moved onto the next grade. If not, you were held back to repeat until you learned your lessons. Most think that elementary, middle school and high school were the criteria for gaining a diploma, but college or institutions of higher learning were also based on numbers.

After elementary school, the system assumed a student could read and write and understand basic theories and expanded the lessons to more complex reading and changing rooms for each subject. This is when the guidance counselor took a role instead of the teacher.

At this point in life, unless declared to follow a family business or follow the family plan to attend a specific university as a legacy, the counselor reviewed the grades and any comments on the student in a one-on-one interview. Similar to sitting with a priest or a doctor, the kids are asked,

“What do you want to do when you grow up?”

 

This is where the ‘guidance’ comes in.

With all the data accumulated through the years in the public educational system and all the opinions, thoughts and observations by a continuous list of instructors, the counselor will choose classes and recommend additional school activities leading the child’s interest while still covering the basic requirements to achieve a piece of paper at the end of term.

Here is where your future career is decided.

 

Some may be directed toward more prominent private schools for the prestige. Some may take advance classes for college prep while others just want a graduation and get out of the mundane boredom of classwork. Some may be forwarded to trade schools that requires more physical than mental knowledge.

The guidance counselor may also point outside activities, clubs, teams and any other social interaction will be appropriate in groups. Networking to the extreme of not ‘what’ you know, it is ‘who’ you know becomes much more prominent in your evaluation. This is the time when ‘puberty’ hits. There is no idea of ‘what you want to do for the rest of your life, when all you want is that girl’s phone number’.

If you make it through the potholes and detours and flash cards and reading ‘Les Misérables’ and regurgitation of the national anthem. There was detention, fire drills, lunch lines, gym (where you can see all the other boys naked and learn popping towels for harassment), assemblies in the auditorium, pep rally on the basketball court and the prom.

Being an alumnus of the ‘US Education System’, I guess I learned something. The guidance counsel did notice the interest in doodling to add artsy stuff to my class listings. Civics, philosophy, calculus, linear algebra were not on the card that would have produced an F, but neither were monetary management, family expense, Big Ticket items, investments and (the most important that no one else will discuss) sex education.

Most of life are our own decisions to solve a conflict or find a new path. Some say that is growing up?

Then the next generation expects you to become their guidance counselor? Being a provider is to say you will be the mentor, instructor, nurse, bank and some old geezer who sleeps in the rocker and tells tales that might inform the children of the possibilities experienced and the mystery to come.

No one can predict the future, just try to guide you into the right direction.