NDEA: The Role Of The Professional School Counselor

The role of the professional school counselor is continuously evolving to meet the needs of students’ demands. This need for variation is and should be evoked in order to increase student achievement. Since the emergence of the profession, school counselor has had to perpetually adjust their roles in order to meet the needs of the students and the advancements in our nation. From immigration to the Civil Rights Movement even into today’s society, school counselor has modified practices to fit the growing demands on the younger generations that are needed in order to be successful adults.

The role of the professional school counselor developed from the focus only on vocational guidance in its early stages with the concept that immigrants from other nations and migrants from rural to urban areas needed to acquire a skill in order to survive (Erford 2015). “Such social and economic phenomena as industrialization, urbanization, and immigration stimulated concerns about whether existing forms of education were appropriate in a rapidly growing industrial society…” (Erford, 2015). This led to school counselor having to do more vocational guidance to ensure that students were ready for the workforce after graduation.
identified professional school counselor as sociopolitical instruments to achieve national goals” (Erford, 2015). This identification was made in an effort to drive school counselor to be the pushing force for students to advance and shine in the subjects of sciences and mathematics so that the United States would have the upper hand as opposed to its Soviet Union and Asian rivals. The role change of the school counselor from a vocational emphasis to a more strenuous academic