Far Beyond Grief Counseling, School Counselors Impact Lives of Students

They are a team of professionals more than 40 strong who hold impressive credentials, unbridled compassion and years of experience working with children on sensitive matters. They are people with the knowledge and ability to instill coping mechanisms in students who, without this support, might struggle severely in school.

And they are a team whose quiet orchestrations go largely unmentioned amid more popular school-related discussions like academics, the arts, furlough days, and student-teacher ratios.

Kevin Johnson, director of pupil services for the , admires the counseling and psychology teams at the schools.

“I continue to be amazed by the professionalism and commitment to students shown by our counseling professionals,” he said in the wake of the news that Hart Middle School eighth grader, Ainsley Freeman, and her mother, Amy Freeman Burton, May 7.

The district provided support for the community immediately.

“I pulled all of the middle school counselors to support students and had two specific secondary counselors pulled from the high school level to support adults,” beginning Tuesday, said Johnson.

Karen Barberio-Kitts, who serves as counselor and school psychologist at both and , holds a masters degree in Educational Psychology and a Bachelors degree in Psychology, along with the required Pupil Personal Services (PPS) credential.

Most of her colleagues in the counseling departments of all school levels also hold masters degrees along with their PPS credentials.

Weekly group counseling sessions, she said, are largely driven by the students. Many of the groups have several sections to accommodate the number of students benefiting from program.

Grief groups, of course, are among the many school counseling groups facilitated by counseling staff either regularly or periodically.

“It might be a parent or a relative who has died, or sometimes kids have friends or acquaintances who have committed suicide,” she said, remembering last year’s , 13, who had attended both Hart and Harvest Park.

In the school library at Hart, Barberio-Kitts and other counselors saw more than 100 students after the Freeman-Burton deaths.

“We made phone calls to all the parents of students who came into the library to let them know (we saw them) and let them know we continue to be there for them,” she said.

“If there are a few who come in at a time, we sometimes group them. A lot are eighth graders and they will get the services as needed.”

Counseling groups cover a wide spectrum of needs, she said.

The goal of 11- to 14- year old children opening up about private matters may seem unreachable to some who have not seen how the groups operate.

“Some students open up automatically and it’s like they’re the group leaders,” Barberio-Kitts said.

“Others can be reserved in the first few sessions, but as they’re listening and hearing what the other kids have to say and what their stories are, they’re realizing that ‘Hey, I’m normal! Other kids feel the same way!’ and they start to open up.

“It’s really a good release to them to know that other kids have had similar experiences. It’s amazing how powerful these groups can be.”

Students share coping skills, she said, and they have ways of making the same points that Baberio-Kitts might want to make but do so in terms their peers understand.

In addition to as-needed grief counseling, other group counseling sections might include:

Family changes groups: “These are for students with something going on at home,” said Barberio-Kitts. “There might be some type of disruptive family issue that makes it hard to cope at school,” she said, mentioning factors such as divorces, remarriages, ill parents or guardians, a parent who is incarcerated or who has alcohol or substance abuse problems.

Anger group: “This kind of group is for students who have trouble with anger. We help them identify body changes that happen when they’re angry to give them specific ways to deal with anger in a more effective way.”

Social Skills groups: Social skills groups, said Barberio-Kitts, help students who might be having trouble finding or keeping friends, or who are having conflicts with peers.

Bullying group: From time to time, the counseling staff runs a bullying group. “Now it’s student run,” said Barberio-Kitts. “We do it at lunch time. There are kids who are very interested in reducing the bullying at Hart.”

At the middle school and high school levels, counselors also manage students’ class scheduling and school program development.

At all school levels, the counselors manage testing and assessments for students needing academic resources.

They take an active role in monitoring each of these students’ individual progress.At the elementary level, the majority of counselors’ time is spent in direct services to students, said Tracy Zuehlsdorf, who works as a counselor at both & schools.

“We do whole classroom guidance in the classrooms themselves,” said Zuehlsdorf.

For instance, all fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms have special sessions about bullying and harassment. At the kindergarten level, classroom sessions cover “stranger danger” and inappropriate touching.

“In one of the other classrooms, the teacher has me come in and do work on the character traits,” she said. “We work on creating a classroom climate."

Additionally, elementary counselors work with students in small groups and individually.

"I see 150 kids per week in pull-out small group counseling,” grouped by age and topic, she said.

One of Zuehlsdorf’s programs combines students from Alisal Elementary with students of Debbie Harvey’s Growth and Development class at . One-on-one, the teenagers mentor the elementary students all year.

The program has been such a success that and are considering implementing a similar arrangement.

Other groups at Alisal and Hearst mirror those of the middle school level and also include groups focused on personal responsibility, self control, empowerment and self-esteem building.

“It doesn’t take long to get them sharing,” Zuehlsdorf said. “One of the benefits of group counseling is when kids get to see they aren’t the only ones, and there’s nothing wrong with them.

“They get in a room with other kids who are just like them. They know ‘We’re all working on these things.’ ”