“I’ll Tread Water, You Use The Life Jacket”

Jessica DeBarry jbddebarry@gmail.com

“I’ll tread water, you use the life jacket”. After spending the past few weeks juggling different components of my career of School Counseling I called a cocounselor to check in and found myself expressing my status of burn out. I found myself apologizing to her for “dumping” but in true counselor fashion; she made the comment “I’ll tread water for awhile, you use the life jacket”.

The analogy struck me as the perfect fit for how we three counselors, in our rural Title I district, work with each other to respond to the different student crises, attendance issues, teacher needs, admin expectations and counseling duties while trying to run a successful, responsive, preventative school counseling program. With an increase in mental health needs in children, driven further by Covid 19 pandemic, treading water has become a common theme among School Counselors whose roles are often left undefined or blurred. Often roles are left as educational leaders or administrative at the expense of our mental health professional role. The roles of school counseling should be allowing us to better serve the complexities and variety of student concerns.

What do School Counselors do when they are missing supportive supervision? We lean on each other, often at the expense of our own self-care and mental health. While peer supervision is a viable option for clinical supervision to new professionals, support for experienced school counselors is left lacking. The need for appropriate clinical supervision and support for school counselors is an ongoing advocacy effort.

Our school district does not have a direct supervisor for the school counselor. Someone with past experience in school counseling with a thumb on the trends and needs of present school counselors. Research shows that school counselors often receive administrative and programmatic supervision lacking clinical supervision (Zalewski, 2022). While we may have supportive administration and district personnel, the need for clinical supervision, which has been shown to increase counseling competencies, reduce burnout and role ambiguity, would provide additional support and advocacy (Peed. 2017).

To sustain and support school counselors and the profession, ethical and professional standards show the need for school counselors to seek supervision (ASCA 2021). As practicing school counselors, advocacy efforts in local school districts, state board of education and federal department of education along with state counseling organizations should include the need and rationale for shoring up consultative and supervisional support for school counselors. For now, I’ll tread water, you use the life jacket”.