Why Do Junior High Students Need Counseling Support?
Why Do Junior High Students Need Professional Counseling Support?
Junior high school (Grades 6-8) is an exciting time at SPBS, but it can also be a frustrating time for students and parents alike, primarily due to their physical and psychological changes and transitions. Our Junior High students' developmental process can also lead to frustrating times for teachers, due to: struggles involving discipline, an increased desire for independence, and appropriate decision-making issues, along with the “testing” of boundaries created by figures of authority.
Junior high school-age students are typically:
Junior high school-age students are typically:
- Physically active, yet easily fatigued by rapid physical growth
- Searching for their identity by turning more toward their peers for ideas and validation of ongoing identity-formation, and away from immediate family
- Experiencing discomfort with their changing bodies
- Very sensitive to comments from peers and elders and to any potential or perceived criticism
- Rely heavily on friends for comfort, understanding, and approval
- Continue to crave attention and praise from parents
As SPBS Junior High students transition through this difficult life stage, professional counselors are able to assist students and their parents if needed. They can also serve as a resource for our teachers and administrators by:
- Helping students identify skills and achievements
- Identifying students in need of counseling support and intervention
- Developing students’ awareness of attitudes and interests
- Promoting students’ welfare by helping meet their academic and emotional needs
- Behavior modification
- Fostering effective communication skills
- Promoting effective learning and time-management skills
- Fostering students’ interpersonal and peer relations
- Improving the students’ self-esteem
- Creating a “listening” environment, which helps the student feel “heard”
Junior high school years are a time in which parents, teachers, and counselors can work together to create an atmosphere of enhanced self-esteem, academic achievement, and personal growth for the student. As needed, SPBS may request that parents provide outside professional counseling by trained professionals, in order to help our junior high students learn to make good choices, help increase self esteem, learn problem solving skills, discuss issues causing stress and anxiety, enhance social skills, improve focusing abilities, and thereby help to increase the student's overall success inside and outside of the classroom.