Energized for Continued Growth in Counseling Students Experiencing Parental Relationship Distress

Christopher Wheelus, cwheelus@liberty.edu

GSCA published an article in The Counselor Connection about divorce being potentially more disruptive to students' academic attainment than parental death. My surprise at that bold finding caused me to reflect on my decision this year to once again work as a part-time couples counselor in clinical practice and part-time volunteer as a school counselor at a local private school. I decided to write my reflections, as follows.

Looking deeper into the article, I read that the researchers obtained data from selective secondary school students in several European countries and that the support they studied centered on financial support. I could immediately imagine the school system and students studied, having toured a high school in Sweden in 2022 and 2023 as part of a study abroad course. While there are several differences between Sweden's school and socialeconomic systems and those of the US, the article does give pause for us to consider our role as school counselors and possible outcomes of our work for children in stressful family situations.

At the beginning of this academic year, I decided that my graduate school counseling students may benefit more from my pedagogy if my experience in schools was current and fresh. So, I started volunteering a day each week at a local school. Soon after starting, I quickly heard from several teachers and administrators about several students who need counseling due to emotional or behavioral issues in the classroom. In each of those cases parental divorce was the primary issue stated and in almost all the ensuing counseling sessions, the students wanted to talk about it. Shortly after starting at the school, I was talking to a science teacher about the GSCA article.

He shared that when he was in middle school his parents divorced. He said that the only thing he remembers from that entire school year was the school counselor. Specifically, he stated remembering not anything she said but simply (and profoundly) that she cared about him and that she was available to him on those days when he was suffering the most and in need of emotional support. He said she was the reason he made it through that year of middle school. You are that person for many of your students.

Counseling students has energized me as a counselor in general, which has energized to continue counseling couples very part-time in private practice (managing, of course, the ethical boundaries by not counseling the parents of students enrolled at my school). The combination of those two endeavors then has energized my teaching of graduate school counseling students. I feel that synergy beginning to improve how I teach. I also feel the pleasure of knowing that helping couples can be a good way to help students, and helping students develop social-emotional skills in current family situations can help students succeed academically. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if my impact as a school counselor is far greater than my efforts to counsel couples. It is certainly more enjoyable! Both are, nonetheless, wonderfully altruistic endeavors.

My challenge to us as school counselors is to consider how to best support students whose parents/guardians are experiencing relationship distress or dissolution. What counseling approach can energize us to provide students what they need to persist, as in the case of the science teacher written about above? What resources to we have from which to become more energized for the task?

Some ideas for us as school counselors are that we can; (a) network with counselors in our communities who provide couples/family counseling in private practice, (b) attend a continuing education workshop sponsored by LPCA of Georgia, GAMFT, or ACA of Georgia to gain knowledge and to expand our network of colleagues in related professions, (c) partner with one of those professionals to present a workshop at the GSCA conference on student success and family issues, (d) refresh your knowledge of a counseling theory that addresses relationship issues from a developmental perspective, and (e) read articles about theories that have broad application across helping professions (i.e., school counseling, mental health counseling, and couples/family counseling), such as SFBT, CBT, and Narrative therapy. I am grateful to GSCA for making articles and resources available to school counselors to equip us to serve students well.