MEC 6511 Principles & Practices of a School Counseling Program (Capstone course)

The primary focus of this course is to acquire the knowledge and skills to understand and implement a comprehensive school counseling program based on the ASCA National Model. The ASCA National Model themes of leadership, advocacy, collaboration and systemic change and the National Model quadrants of foundation, delivery, management and accountability are explored in detail. In addition, this course presents the challenges of the school counseling reform agenda of the past 25 years and how school counselors proactively responded to the call for providing every child with a quality education. A context is established to address what school counselors need to know and be able to do to successfully work with every student in the K-12 environment. School counselor skills including social justice advocacy, working with special populations and creating safe school environments are discussed. This is a capstone course and is to be taken immediately before the commencement of the clinical semester. This course is restricted to School Counseling candidates only; non-certification track candidates should not register.