Confidential Counselling and the challenge of school counselling
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For some years I combined my role as a teacher with being a school counsellor and although I enjoyed both it was often a strain to move from one role to another. Many teachers, of course combine counselling skills in their work but this is not the same as seeing a student for a confidential counselling session. I was quite an authoritarian teacher, who expected my students to be well mannered and respectful. I was surprised and rather touched that the students I saw for counselling were able to set aside their knowledge of me as a teacher and learn to trust me in a different role. I used to spend some time carefully explaining to them that I was not a bossy teacher in the counselling room but was there to listen and not to tell. In some ways I think that they found it easier than I did to see and accept me as different. I often felt torn between the needs of the organisation in which I worked and the needs of the child.
Although I always ensured that I never actually taught the students I counselled, it was still quite difficult to move from teaching a bottom set in year 9 to meeting a student experiencing difficulties in coming to terms with the loss of a parent or sibling. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the concept of a bottom set year 9, let me enlighten you. The class will be large, thirty plus, with a majority of boys who are usually unruly, disaffected and very challenging of all authority, quite different then from dealing with one student at a time. I recently stopped teaching after 37 years at the coal-face but continued to work in the same school on a part time basis as a counsellor. Perhaps it is true that you don’t realise how much banging your head up against a wall hurts, until you stop! I’m delighted that I now have one role in the school, as a counsellor. It is so different and so much more satisfying - no more dashing from a lesson to the counselling room and trying hard to make the necessary mental shift in my approach and attitude. My caseload is about 10 students who I see during the course of two days. They are usually referred by Heads of Year or Heads of Department for a wide variety of reasons such as bereavement, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, family problems and bullying. Some students self refer. Most or them have never experienced counselling before and the first session is usually taken up with explaining what it is and how it might help them. Not surprisingly they often regard confidentiality with some suspicion and it takes time to build up trust.
Counselling young people is different from dealing with adults and I use different strategies in order to put them at their ease. Sometimes they arrive with words tumbling over themselves, longing to talk and get everything off their chest while other students sit silently, uncommunicative and hostile. In most cases they have never experienced the undivided attention and respect which I give them. I take what they have to say seriously. I believe them. I walk by their side and we try to tackle the problems together.
There seems to be an ambivalent attitude to counselling in schools which reflects society’s views. On the one hand, some teachers expect me, as a counsellor, to wave a magic wand over the students they refer and make them better quickly while on the other hand they can be sceptical and often scathing about the whole process.
They say they understand that sessions with students are confidential and then become irritated when I don’t give progress reports. In spite of these obstacles I believe that the opportunity to seek help through counselling is vital in schools and that my respect and attention can help the students to develop and heal.
Lona Stafford trained at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation and The Metanoia Institute. As an accredited member of The British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, she offers <a href="http://www.person-centred-counselling.co.uk">person centred counselling</a> on a variety of issues. You can visit her web-site at http://www.person-centred-counselling.co.uk
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