School Counselors Training Paraprofessionals: A Practical Model for Providing Technical Assistance in the Rural School Setting

Abstract

The roles and responsibilities of school counselors who serve in rural settings have increased dramatically over the years. One new aspect of the school counselor's role is to provide inservice/preservice training for teachers and school staff. With the increasing numbers of paraprofessionals now working in the schools, there is a need to provide them with training in critical teaching functions. In this paper, we propose a model for providing technical assistance on teaching and classroom management to paraprofessionals serving in rural settings. Our model for school counselors to train paraprofessionals has four features: (1) provide clear explanations of teaching assignments, (2) provide a clear rationale and purpose of the teaching or management strategy, (3) provide frequent positive feedback to the paraprofessional on his or her implementation of the teaching and management technique, and (4) provide specific corrective feedback in areas of improvement. We highlight the discussion of our model by presenting vignettes to illustrate the model's effective implementation in rural school settings.

Exploring the Phenomenon of Rural School Counselors’ Professional Identity Construction

“…Rural school counselors, in a study by Monteiro-Leitner et al (2006), indicated that they often performed duties related to special education services and testing, for which they were neither prepared nor trained. Spending time on these other duties is likely due to a lack of personnel resources (Darch et al, 2014). School counselors in rural communities also may be called upon to serve as community mental health counselors, further expanding their role and engendering more confusion around the school counselor identity (Bardhoshi & Duncan, 2009; Hann-Morrison, 2011).…”