By Tami Silverman

President and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute

Tami Silverman

WARSAW — A year since the process first began, the Lilly Endowment has announced which Indiana schools are receiving groundbreaking grants to implement innovative changes in school counseling. In Kosciusko County, Warsaw Community Schools is among those selected to move forward with its plan. They and all the award winners should be congratulated for their ingenuity and enthusiasm.

Last fall, the Lilly Endowment announced a groundbreaking $22 million investment aimed at sparking innovative, sustainable, comprehensive school counseling programs. The challenges public and charter school districts face – too few counselors and increasingly complex student needs – are well documented. The Endowment’s Comprehensive Counseling Initiative inspired districts to look beyond present needs and visualize what an ideal counseling program could accomplish.

This initiative allows districts to accelerate, broaden and/or pilot efforts to address the academic, postsecondary and social-emotional counseling needs of students. Those complex social-emotional needs came up repeatedly across the 90 school districts with which the Indiana Youth Institute worked during the grant’s planning phase. Critical skills such as self-control, teamwork and stress management are already part of comprehensive counseling models, but additional pressures such as peer cruelty, suicidal ideation and parental drug addiction make a strong support network even more important to student well-being.

Experts say school counselors have long understood the connection between academic, career and personal/social domains. Yet for school counselors to have the intended impact on students, they need realistic caseloads so they can interact with both students and parents.

An early takeaway is the need for improved and increased parent engagement with school counselors across all grade levels. Last spring, IYI surveyed more than 80,000 students, parents and school personnel as part of our work with school districts. In those surveys, more than half of parents said they hadn’t spoken to their child’s school counselor during the current school year. A significant number of students said they wanted more individualized interactions with their counselor.

The impact of this educational investment is already being felt, with many school districts taking early action. Some schools are adding to existing counseling programs. Others are reaching out to student and parents. And still others are using empathy-based curriculum in faculty and staff trainings. Overall, many schools reported an increased understanding of the importance of evidence-based comprehensive counseling programs. The next four years promise improved and expanded school counseling programs.

Increased achievement in academics, social-emotional well-being, and college/career preparedness benefits our students, our communities and our state. The Lilly Counseling Initiative has sparked renewed interest in the role counselors play in student success and helps us see the opportunities we have to work with counselors to address the complex, ever-changing needs of today’s students.