Classroom guidance is not a new concept

In response to the Feb. 11 story regarding a certain mother’s opinion about guidance lessons in a fifth-grade classroom at Beech Hill School in Otis, classroom guidance is not a new concept. For more than 10 years, Maine’s Board of Education has recognized the need for and encouraged the professional facilitation of lessons focusing on socialization and personal well-being issues within public school classrooms. The role of the school counselor has changed, and in my opinion, for the better.

A guidance counselor is no longer simply expected to see students individually to talk about career and college planning. Guidance counselors are also required in many schools to go in to every grade every week and conduct a lesson on one of many social principles and expectations that have been outlined for all Maine children in the Maine State Learning Results.

Examples of such lessons would be: decision making skills and strategies, conflict resolution techniques, communication styles, self-esteem work and bully prevention. How do we expect our teenagers to make well-informed and solid decisions on such issues as drug experimentation, sexuality and getting help for themselves and friends if we do not spend some time in the elementary and middle school years having kids “practice” asserting themselves?

Classroom guidance is not like abortion or prayers in schools. Those comparisons made by Serena Daigle are ridiculous. When we have gotten to the point where we feel violated if someone asks us to articulate our personal beliefs, then we have come closer to becoming a truly irresponsible and unaccountable society.

As for the journalistic quality of the story, Bill Trotter disappointed me by not researching the Maine Learning Results. Instead of merely reporting on one mother’s misinterpretations of what happens in her daughter’s classroom, he could have offered a more informative and objective article on the role of and need for school counselors in general.

The Maine State Learning Results document outlines Guiding Principles and a Common Core of Learning. There are numerous principals and expectations described in this document that classroom guidance and counseling services in the school can and does directly effect and enhance.

A few examples would be: developing “Clear and Effective Communicators,” “Creative and Practical Problem Solvers,” “Responsible and Involved Citizens,” “Collaborative and Quality Workers,” and “Personal and Global Stewards.”

Anyone who believes that school counselors are really interested in digging up dirt on families is grossly mistaken. With a typical student/counselor ratio of 300-to-1, we hardly have enough time to do the job school departments require of us. We aren’t out there trying to solicit business. What we do want, however, is to see Maine’s children growing and developing into happy, responsible and productive people with a zeal for life and learning.

American children today need all of the guidance they can get. If your child participates in any classroom guidance at school, consider yourself lucky and be thankful for the administrators and school boards who support it, fund it and most importantly, believe in it.

Amy Riddell is a school counselor from Mount Desert.