Planning and implementing group counseling in a high school - Perspective From The Field

Professional School Counseling, Oct, 2001 by Vivian V. Ripley, Gary E. Goodnough

Group counseling is a direct service offered to students as part of a comprehensive school counseling program (Campbell & Dahir, 1997; Gysbers & Henderson, 2000). Although group counseling is cited as an effective intervention (Gladding, 1999), we found that many high school counselors struggle to effectively plan and implement ongoing group counseling services. In fact, the overall frequency of group counseling in high schools has been found to be remarkably low (Tennyson, Miller, Skovalt, & Williams, 1987).

One of the major impediments to planning and implementing group counseling is that the academic culture and climate of high schools often runs counter to the type of environment necessary to implement group counseling (Bowman, 1987; Schmidt, 1999). However, we found that collaboration with administrators and faculty can lessen the logistical and bureaucratic concerns of the school environment that hinder group counseling initiatives.

The purpose of this article is to offer strategies we found to be successful in planning and implementing group counseling. These strategies are consistent with the professional principles of group counseling (Gladding, 1999) and were designed and revised between 1987 and 1997 during our experiences as high school counselors. These services were implemented in a rural high school with approximately 1,000 students.

Logistical Strategies

School Structure and Student Need

In planning and implementing group counseling services, we focused on the contemporary needs of high school students within the parameters of the school's structure. Student need necessitated a focus on preventive, developmental, and crisis-oriented groups (Myrick, 1993). The focus of the groups included drug awareness, effective relationships, study skills, career planning, senior transitions, divorce, and bereavement. These groups were planned and implemented based on the developmental maturity of high school students and the constraints of a high school schedule. For example, when we began offering groups, the school structure was defined by a traditional six-period day with each period lasting approximately one hour. This structure simplified implementation as it allowed us to conduct one-hour groups, which seemed appropriate for adolescents. This planning strategy was flexible enough to allow us to adapt it over the years when our school structure changed to block scheduling.

Developing Awareness

Once our focus was clear, it was essential to develop teacher and administrator awareness of the centrality and importance of group counseling services in the high school. To accomplish this, we utilized the program components of responsive services and guidance curriculum as presented in Gysbers and Henderson's (2000) comprehensive school counseling program model. We used group counseling as a method of direct service delivery within these two components. By offering groups that addressed issues in both components, we reduced the disproportionate amount of time spent providing responsive services to only a few students, leaving more time for the proactive dimensions of both program components. For example, to address reactive needs, we routinely offered groups to assist students with issues of family separation, divorce, and bereavement. The pervasive nature of these issues affected many of our students, creating an ongoing need for these types of groups. Additionally; proactive and developmentally oriented groups focused on post-secondary planning for juniors and seniors and transition groups for seniors as they prepared for life after high school (Goodnough & Ripley, 1997). Proactive groups complemented other guidance curriculum initiatives that were infused into the school's curriculum. Delivering group services in this way helped develop an awareness that group counseling can be a powerful venue for reaching students.

Policy Considerations

Group counseling services that reached into the mainstream of the school required and were facilitated by administrative support. This support was strengthened when adopted as policy. Our request for this need-driven policy change gained acceptance when it was incorporated into other policies. This type of policy revision demonstrated that need-driven change did not have to threaten or undermine the orderliness of the school. This strategy fostered collaboration among school personnel and provided access to all students without penalty or partiality.

We worked with administrators to foster policy changes in the following ways. First, we incorporated group counseling into existing policies that regulated students being excused from class to attend school-sponsored activities.

Next, we proposed that two other policies should govern group counseling. The first policy stipulated that the time students spent in group counseling could not be counted as an absence from a class. The second policy stipulated that teachers could not deny students the opportunity to attend a group counseling session. For example, teachers were required to allow students to leave class to attend a group session in the same way they excused students to participate in a sporting event without counting them absent from class. Accordingly; existing school policy allotted students a given amount of time to make up work, without penalty, when they missed class for illness or other school-sponsored activities. Since group counseling now came under the rubric of a school-sponsored activity, students were responsible for following this rule on making up work when they missed class to attend a session. This eliminated an added burden on teachers to monitor the assignments missed by students who attended group counseling (Wittmer, 2000). In turn, because group counseling was a voluntary school-sponsored activity, we needed to be flexible if students chose to remain in class rather than attend a group.