A potential goal in mind is becoming a high school counselor. I was wondering if this a good career? How long does it take to become one? What major do I need to take? I’m transferring to a university with a psychology major from my community college, and one of my main goals is to go into a career relating to psychology. Could I become a high school counselor if I major in psychology? I was also wondering what happens to counselors when schools are closed for summer or winter break? I had that aspect in mind as well.
One of the only fields that requires more credentialing, is more demanding, and paid less than teaching is counseling. Counseling in a school exacerbates this.
Schools desperately need counselors, so if it’s a calling then I think you’re doing a great service.
But no. It is not a good career. I can’t imagine another job where you put in more work for as little compensation as you would expect.
Understand you are going to see students that you really like with bad home lives, destructive habits and you will rip your heart out trying to help them and send them away knowing that they’re going to live a torturous life with no support.
There will be many successes. But, be able to know you can cope with that. It’s not easy.
Some schools have counselors work summers, some don’t. You either make enough money or you work at a restaurant or doing whatever.
I suggest being a school psychologist if you want to help people with their problems. Plus, they earn more.
Im a college counselor but have worked abroad. Good perks. Just need a bachelors. I would say education could be a good major but anything is fine. You get summers paid, housing is often included, but wages may not be great (depends on the country). Good luck.
Extraordinarily frustrating. I was a school counselor for all grades at one point or another. It has the potential to be an incredible, awesome, rewarding, and impactful job. BUT, administration has the school counselor handling schedules, special education, cumulative folders, response to intervention, and any other miscellaneous task they can’t figure out who to give it to.
The modern school counselor has a degree only slightly different than that of a counselor who can bill insurance. This means that most kids in this country have access, every school day, to a masters level mental health professional. Children are dying from suicide, drug overdoses, abuse, and school shootings. They cut. They suffer from eating disorders. They are abused and neglected.
But administrators would rather the counselor take care of anything but the student. I remember a specific situation in which I was speaking with a second grade student, trying to decide if I needed to call social services due to possible abuse, while a staff member was trying to rush me to chair a special ed meeting. So, like I said, frustrating. And hard. Real hard sometimes. About once per school year I had to lock myself in my office or step outside the building to have a good cry. You can only hold it together for so long after working directly with a little girl who had been raped by her cousin. Or with another who was sexually assaulted by a neighbor boy…only to meet with her older brother later who admitted to being raped by the same boy. But, as the school counselor, I helped all these kids. I helped the boy with rope burns around his neck and the girl with the cuts on her arms. I helped students through the deaths of parents, teachers, and pets. I taught hundreds of kids in classroom lessons.
I could rant for a long time, but to sum it all up: It’s a hard job, especially if you’re there to help kids and not be an administrator.