Last week I attended the first 90 minutes of a district counselor meeting. It was a good chance to see this group and to get a feel for their meetings. After some initial discussion, the training turned to how counselors can recognize and support students who injure themselves. Although I knew that some teens do this, I never really spent much time considering the implications of this act or how to respond to it. For our counselors, assisting those who self-injure is one of a myriad of their responsibilities to help our students. The training was good in that it caused me to step back from the consuming macro perspective of the district and instead focus on the micro.
The recent release of the NAEP reading scores shows that Alaska’s 4th and 8th grade students do not read terribly well when compared to their peers across the country. This disconcerting news is fodder for many to show that public schools do not work. Although I don’t have access to KPBSD’s scores on this exam, I am confident that our students score above the national average. While the NAEP tests disaggregate for socioeconomic status, they of course do not do the same for the emotional or psychological well-being of the test takers. In a perfect world all of our students would have a low level of stress and would excel at school. Our reality however, is that some of our students experience a fair amount of stress and partially depend on school to help them cope with it. Because test scores are quantifiable, it is easy to use them to suggest school quality. A more holistic assessment of our schools would include the micro data that is not readily available. It is expected that schools do so much more than teach students to read. I offer this not as an excuse for not having higher test scores (our scores by the way, are pretty good) but to help ensure that the perspective of public schools is not limited to these scores. Please join in me in celebrating our counselors this week (it is National Counseling Week) who do so much for our students. Our counselors are a critical piece of the KPBSD puzzle, often helping students with the micro that few take time to think about.
One Comment
Dr. Atwater, thank you very much for reflecting on the self-injury issue and counselors’ roles at schools. This year, I know of 10 middle school age students who cut on themselves. There are more, I am sure.