Concerns of newly arrived immigrant students: implications for school counselors

Professional School Counseling, Oct, 2003 by Franklyn C. Williams, S. Kent Butler

The main point is that adjusting counselor education programs to more adequately prepare school counselors to work with newly arrived immigrant students is of utmost importance with regards to effectiveness in the work of these counselors. CACREP, as the accrediting body for counselor education programs, can be influential in bringing about this adjustment.

State Level

At the state level, guidance and counseling efforts to assist newly arrived immigrant students can be orchestrated by state education officials. Specific laws and mandates can be drafted and implemented by such officials in order to ensure that all students within a particular state have equal access to available transition programs. Such laws and mandates would also ensure that all such programs within that state are of the same quality, content, and methodology with regards to guidance and counseling components.

In Florida, for example, one such state law or mandate could require that all schools provide cultural orientation classes for newly arrived immigrant students within a certain number of days after enrollment, for a specified period of time, and if the population of such students exceeds a certain number or percentage of the total school population. Other than Florida, new laws and mandates might be especially urgent in states such as California and Texas where the percentages of newly arrived immigrant students continue to steadily increase.

All in all, specific laws and mandates would ensure consistency between programs in the same state. Further, they would help lessen the instances of piece-meal, individually school-based approaches.

District/Local Level

District officials with responsibility for guidance and school counseling can develop and conduct regular in-service professional development programs for the counselors in their schools (James, 1997). Appropriate in-service professional development might focus on such things as how to more accurately assess and diagnose the needs of each individual newly arrived immigrant student in culturally sensitive ways. In-service professional development might also take the form of workshops to teach about cultural adjustment. In a district such as Orange County (Florida), for example, these workshops might also focus learning about the culture and history of the countries such as Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Haiti where immigrants in that district mainly originate. Regular in-service professional development would allow school counselors to remain current in their knowledge and level of proficiency as far as newly arrived immigrant students are concerned.

Another example of how districts can implement a system-wide approach is by setting up centralized intake centers--coordinated and run by school counselors--for newly arrived immigrant students. At these centers, school counselors could have information about area schools readily available and on-hand when immigrant students and their parents first come in to register for enrollment (First, 1988). Some of these are already in operation in several schools and districts (Feinberg, 2000).