Counsellor resource: why counsellors should be classroom teachers, too

I deliver a classroom-based course to students on college and career planning. I’ve been teaching courses related to college and career planning for most of my 17 years in college counselling. It is always a work in progress, and I continue to tweak what I teach and how I teach it each year.

I see the students once a week for 60 minutes per block. While much of the course is built around preparing students to apply to college in the first half of their senior year (Year 13), it also aims to help students deal with the uncertainty and the ups and downs that come with major life transitions.

The course helps students proactively plan for their future while also learning to manage the myriad emotions they will experience. The curriculum guide includes lesson plans, slides that go with each lesson, and homework assignments.

I find that teaching students in a classroom setting is the best way to build trusting relationships with students while also providing them with clear, consistent and equitable support as they prepare for post-secondary life. Here’s why:

1. Building stronger relationships

Working with students in a classroom setting allows me to get to know them better and build stronger relationships.

The consistency of seeing students in a class is very different from seeing them in individual or small-group meetings. I get to know what they are like in the classroom. I see how they interact with their peers and how they treat others. I see what they are like when they are stressed out by other classes.

Classroom teaching facilitates strong relationships with students and allows me to get to know students in a multifaceted way that improves my ability to support them.

2. Providing equitable support

Teaching a course on college and career planning helps me provide accurate, timely, developmentally appropriate information to students in an equitable way.

No longer do I focus on the squeaky wheels – the students who consistently come to ask me questions. Nor do I have to pull students out of other classes or interrupt extracurricular activities. Having a class with students allows me to spread my support equitably while also ensuring that all students are provided with critical information that empowers them to own this process for themselves.

Perhaps most critically, I build in deadlines that help students manage their time and that prevent them from slipping through the cracks. For example, I have students draft their first college essay in May of their junior year (Year 12). Then I match them with an admissions counsellor from a university for an early read on their essay.

Because students are intimidated by the admissions counsellors, they all draft something to share. So before they go on summer vacation, they’ve already drafted a college essay and received feedback from me and from an admissions counsellor. This is in stark contrast to my first years as a college counsellor, when I had some students drafting their first essays in mid-December of their senior year (Year 13).

The interim deadlines in my class improve the quality of students’ work and decrease their stress, so that they are ready to apply in a timely manner.

3. Cultivating resilience and stress-management skills

Having consistent time in a group setting with students helps me to cultivate their resilience and stress-management skills. Our classroom conversations help students understand that almost everyone feels uncertainty and anxiety about the unknowns of their future.

Most days, I start class with a quick check-in: “On a scale of one to five, how are you doing today?” or “Share a rose (something positive in your life), a bud (something you are looking forward to) and a thorn (something that isn’t going well).”

In a recent class, a student who plays for the boys’ varsity soccer team – and who usually doesn’t show emotional vulnerability – was in tears while talking about the pressure from his parents. His classmates rallied around him, and the sense of camaraderie and support was palpable.

Having these conversations helps the students realise that they are all experiencing the same things, and helps me teach them skills to manage their time and their emotions.

This is a version of the course that I’ve been working on for about the past five years: College & Career Planning Grade 11 – 2022-2023 – Curriculum Planning Document

This curriculum is a work in progress and has many flaws, but hopefully it can be a resource for you if you are able to get classroom time with your students.

If you teach a class and are open to sharing your curriculum, I would love to see it (and steal from it!). And if you dig into the resource I’m sharing here and have any feedback, I would be very grateful for it – find me on LinkedIn here.