Final Projects in School Counseling

Working with adolescents allows me to repeatedly hear my students’ exasperated voices ask the question, “but when am I ever going to have to know this in real life?” I try to come up with answers as often as I can, but I have to admit that sometimes they are right. In high school and even college it is sometimes the case that final exams, papers, and presentations are full of information that you may never need to know again. However, as this semester comes to a close at Suffolk, I have reflected on the usefulness of the final projects that I handed in. When I am able to step back from my work, it occurs to me: I will definitely use this again!

In my Child and Adolescent Development course, my final project was to create a guidance seminar on a topic of our choice. We were to present it to our class as if we were school counselors presenting it to the families of our students. My partner and I chose to create a seminar on stress and how families can help adolescents learn to manage stress. Based on the information we had learned this semester, we were able to put together some physiological and developmental explanations for why adolescents may experience stress differently than adults, hopefully helping adolescents and their families understand each other a little better. Though the “families” in this case were our peers, I became acutely aware of our role of educating families and other stakeholders in children’s lives about their development and how to best work with them. After explaining what was going on in adolescents’ brains, we went on to provide some knowledge about typical stressors for high school students and some concrete suggestions for how families could help. At the end of it, I walked away with a true understanding of the potential impact school counselors could have by sharing what they know with families, students, and faculty members. I also walked away with a presentation on stress management that I could give to families tomorrow if I needed to. I can bring this to job interviews to show how ready I am for the job and I feel more confident in my abilities to present to families should I get the opportunity in my internship or in a future job.

In another course, Action Research, we were charged with the task of conducting research at our internship sites or jobs and presenting our findings to our peers. In the current landscape of education, school counselors (among other educators) are being asked to become more accountable for their work. They are expected to show how their work has impacted the school or the academic achievement of the students by using data. This was a perfect opportunity for us to practice so that we could enter the field with the appropriate research and analysis skills. I chose to analyze the impact of a summer intervention on summer learning loss in the middle school students that I work with. The content of the Action Research course gave us all of the knowledge that we needed to set up a research design, conduct the research, analyze the results, and share them with our peers. I appreciated walking around the room and hearing about the results of each of the research projects my peers conducted at their internship sites. It allowed me to see just how important data is to our work and how prepared we will all be to use it to benefit our future students and schools!

These are just two examples of the practical skills that I have gained in my Suffolk classes. I also have an entire curriculum that I created in my Groups in Schools class, videos of myself completing a counseling session, and will soon have sample college recommendations after completing my summer classes this year. A few people have asked me if I think I will be prepared to enter the field after my graduate program. I suppose I can’t say for sure until I get there, but I do feel ready based on the work I am doing. Finals week is a little more bearable when you know you are gaining valuable skills that you’ll need in the future!

Please feel free to contact me at mkay@suffolk.edu if you have questions about the program at Suffolk!