Washington Middle School Counseling

Each year Seattle Public School students fill out a school climate survey, which covers various aspects of day-to-day life at their school. These areas include general climate (e.g., feelings about school, safety, teachers belonging, school interest), Bullying, Decision Making, working with others, and problem solving. Today we comparred the 2007 and 2008 results for Washington.

Here are some results that stood out for us:

• There are almost an equal number of boys and girls attending this year.
• the population of African American students declined by 4%, to 13% of the population. We wondered about the reasons for this.
• Anywhere fro 5% to 10% of the student body is at academic risk at a given time. We discussed ways to be helpful to this segment, and also discussed what services to provide to the other 90%. Our charge as school counselors is to address the academic, career, and personal/social development domains for all our children. The sheer size of the Washington student body (over 1,000 students), the class schedule and personnel resources all impact the delivery of services. I’ll be discussing this issue in more depth here in future posts.
• Although there were improvements in how students feel about belonging, getting help, and having adults around who cared, the numbers were still below an outright “yes”. We’d like to continue this trend to reach and then exceed that goal.
• The numbers on bullying are encouraging. there has been upward movement in all areas. Fewer students report being bullied, more students are speaking up when they are bullied, and the feel more adults in the school are trying to put a stop to bullying. We’d like to see the anti-harassment classes, currently offered to all students once a month, expanded and made more frequent, as they seem to have played a key role in increasing safety at our school.
• Decision making skills need more work, even though students report an increase in use of options, thinking before they act, etc.
• Finally, the school needs to do a better job of informing parents when their student does something well.

If you have any comments about any of these areas, we’d like to hear them. Just click on the comments link just below this post.