A personalized, caring, and collaborative approach to students’ academic and social-emotional needs can engage students in their own futures.  Deficits can be overcome.

Authoritarian, elitist, and racist practices may need to be identified and opposed.  Action by parents, school staff, and students themselves may be both necessary and empowering.

I am a Social Worker and independent psychotherapist who worked with students, their parents, teachers, school counselors, and administrators at Just Some High School (JSHS) (a pseudonym) for four years, from 2008 until 2012. I was an “outside counselor” because I was not employed by the school but rather by my student-clients themselves, through their health insurance.

JSHS is an urban school of about 1200 students, has more than 35% Latino students, and is ranked in the lowest 15% of schools in the state. Half of JSHS students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, indicating economic class (“JSHS data,” 2013).

For two years previous to starting at JSHS, I worked as a counselor in the middle school where I had formed strong working relationships with staff, students, and their parents. We had some success with students who the principal considered to be “some of our neediest.” When he heard of the successes, a new high school Assistant Principal invited me to come do the same sort of work at JSHS.

Most of my referrals, first at the middle school and then at the high school, came from school-employed guidance and adjustment counselors who saw my services as a way to get more help for their students at no extra cost to the school.  They liked that my approach was not limited to meeting with the student but also included communicating and working with school staff and family.

A large percent of students at JSHS have one of the Medicaid behavioral health insurances, which pay for meetings as well as for collateral work.  Reimbursement for collateral work allowed me to spend important time with parents, teachers and other school staff.  Together, we could identify and try to meet students’ needs.