JSHS administration supported my efforts as a counselor by giving me a room, a phone to call into classrooms, and permission to take students from class for counseling.

They supported my efforts to practice collaboratively, allowing me to attend school meetings, including IEP, parent, and disciplinary meetings, and to advocate for and with students and parents.

Sometimes, I could influence the school to change a student’s program and get additional or different services.  I was able to advocate that school disciplinary and grading practices be more supportive of students.

JSHS administration welcomed my promotion of concepts from Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) (Greene, 1998, 2010). CPS allows for a focus on lagging academic and social emotional skills instead of on diagnosed student pathology.

I also promoted ideas and practices from Collaborative Family Therapy (CFT) (Harlene  Anderson & Gehart, 2007) and Reflecting Team Family Therapy(Andersen, 1991).  CFT gave students and staff a structured and respectful venue for dialogue.

I and a school adjustment counselor who also adopted this practice, met with faculty and students in collaborative family therapy-like meetings for which a staff member agreed to temporarily relinquish power and privilege to create a more equal dialogue.  The result was often that “discipline problem” students and “bad” teachers became more human to each other and more cooperative for each other.

The school administration invited me to some of their strategy meetings at which I advocated giving individualized attention to meet every student’s needs.  This contributed to the conceptualization and implementation of the JSHS version of a process known widely as the Child Study Team (CST).  Students came to the attention of the CST due to failing grades, poor attendance, and /or other concerns of school staff, a parent, nurse, or me.

Meetings to assess a student could include parents and students as well as school staff, as appropriate. Needs were assessed and actions taken, in a shorter time frame than was previously possible. The school’s vision and philosophy shifted toward a more collaborative, egalitarian, and individualized needs-based approach.

My own experience suggests that this shift had the additional benefit of lessening the need for referrals to Special Education. Previous to this introduction of the CST, I would counsel parents with children whose needs were not being met to request testing from the Special Education department.  After its introduction, I referred students to the CST and informed parents of the process.

In my role as an outside psychotherapist, I saw that one-on-one individual psychotherapy was helpful but insufficient for most students because problems are not just in the student but dwell also in their environment.

It is not helpful to view a school like JSHS as either all good or all bad.  What is important is to work to improve it in ways that are crucial to students’ wellbeing.  Will their experience of school turn students against future education or will students learn skills and gain knowledge to help them have a better chance to live happy and productive lives?  Will they have administrators and teachers who reproduce hierarchical, elitist, and racist assumptions or will they learn the skills, including self advocacy needed to become responsible, empowered citizens?

There were and are many positive initiatives at JSHS and many good, hard working and collaborative staff and administrators.

But there were also hostile and anti-student individuals within the school who would talk about “respect” and “progress” up the management chain, but practice domination and discrimination on those below them in the hierarchy, including against both students and teachers.

Contradictory tendencies can exist within any institution and even within the same person.  JSHS or any school can be viewed as a vital, dynamic system, under contention in many of its important aspects.