During the second day of the 5th annual Guam Department of Education School Counselor’s Conference Tuesday at the Fiesta Resort Guam, Dr. Judy Bowers, who is affiliated with ASCA, emphasized the need for school administrators to support their counselors in an effort to raise success rates among public school students.
Bowers is on Guam to train local school counselors with logistics based on the ASCA model, which she co-authored.
“I had to continually remind [school administrators] of what their counselors needed to do,” said Bowers of her role in Tucson. “They know counselors are very responsible, so they had counselors doing testing, desk duties and organizing programs and most of them have a master’s degree.
“Don’t have them doing clerical work. These people have excellent training and they could go in and they could really do something to help kids.”
Bowers said counselors should spend 80 percent of their time working with students and the remaining 20 percent doing paperwork.
“Counselors today have to go into the classrooms. This is my opinion: If they have less than 300 students, they should be in there every week,” Bowers said.
