Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration in a CSCP

1. Publisher to insert cover image here CHAPTER 5THE THEMES OF YOUR CSCP Developed by: Kelli Saginak, Amy Taake, & Anna GirdauskasUniversity of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

2. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration in a CSCP • The themes of the National Model are Leadership, Advocacy, Collaboration, and Systemic Change • Leadership: taking responsibility for initiating and propelling change for social justice • Advocacy: speaking and acting with and for disenfranchised persons • Collaboration: working with others in the school and community • Systemic Change: occurs when leadership, advocacy, and collaboration take place

3. Leadership: School Counselor as Leader • Counselors learn how to build consensus, how to facilitate others' finding their own answers, how to foster communication within and between groups, and how to empower clients to embrace their own intuitive life direction while evaluating alternatives

4. Leadership: School Counselor as Leader • Important to lead in various areas of the school community: • Advocating for student success • Leading various committees • Multicultural Awareness • Mentoring Programs • Student Leadership • Pupil Assistance Programs

5. Leadership: School Counselor as Leader • School counselors must be leaders and advocates for students, families, issues of social justice, schools, and the developmental agendas of students and families • The National Center for Transforming School Counseling advocates that counselors focus on the whole school and systemic concerns by performing various roles: • Leader • Planner • Collaborator • Service Broker • Program Developer

6. Formal and Informal Power Structures • Understand power to understand leadership • Five Types of Power: • Reward Power: Provides benefits perceived as valuable • Coercive Power: Imposes punishments or remove benefits • Legitimate Power: Leader has the right to make the request and the follower has obligation to comply • Expert Power: Leader has the expertise, knowledge, or training that will result in valued outcomes • Referent Power: Follower's admiration, liking, desire for approval, or identification with the leader, which prompts compliance

7. Traditional, Transformative, and Transformational Leadership • Traditional Leadership: Influence toward goal achievement • "The art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations" • Methods to motivating vary • Three frames of traditional leadership: • Structural Leadership: Building of viable organizations, human resource leadership, etc.. • Political Leadership: Distribution of power • Symbolic Leadership: Interpretation and reinterpretation of meaning within our society

8. Traditional, Transformative, and Transformational Leadership • Transformative Leadership: Fosters creativity and engagement • "Engaged, activist, and courageous approach" • Transforming the school environment into one to help students become thoughtful, successful, caring, and engaged citizens • Transformational Leadership: Change agents who inspire innovation, and create and articulate a clear vision for an organization • Empowering others to exceed their own expectations, engender the trust of others, inspire extra effort, and give meaning to organizational life

9. Participatory and Distributed Leadership • Participatory Leadership: One person takes initiative for engaging in the change process, and recruits others with similar vision and dedication to work together toward shared goals • Intentional inclusion of others in decision making, policy making, program design, and efforts toward a socially just school environment • More democratic model of leadership • Distributed Leadership: Interactions among multiple leaders • Emphasis on interdependence of all persons and their shared goals as mutually beneficial ways to collaborate and coordinate their activities

10. Myths About Leadership • MYTH: Leaders come from maintaining the status quo • They come from finding new ways to address old problems • MYTH: Leaders focus on the short-term • They are able to maintain long-term approach to problem-solving • Change is incremental and slow • MYTH: Leadership is reserved for only a very few people • Leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices that enhances certain qualities in everyone

11. Personal Qualities of Effective Leaders • The list is not exhaustive • Includes the qualities discussed in Chapter 1 • Also includes: vision, strength, commitment, social awareness, energy, persistence, diplomacy, creativity, assertiveness, dependability, etc.. • Not a list that someone aspiring to be a leader must have or a list of qualities all leaders possess • It is a list of qualities every school counselor should consider developing throughout their career

12. Leadership Roles and Skills • Most Effective Leadership Skills: • Establishing a vision for the program • Setting standards for performance of tasks or excellence of endeavors • Creating focus and direction for collective efforts • Caring deeply about what the organization or group does • Believing that doing the group's work well is important • Inspiring trust • Building relationships and empowering others • Communicating the vision with passion to others

13. Leadership Roles and Skills • Success in leadership resulted from: • Taking responsibility for change • Having courage in the face of doubts • Focused and clear school-based goals • Support from administration and others after some successes are demonstrated • Growth from self-reflection • Efforts that included and balanced all four leadership frames • Persistence in the face of feeling isolated

14. A Process Model of Leadership • Five Steps for Leaders to Follow: • Challenge the process • Inspire a shared vision • Enable others to act • Model the way • Encourage the heart • Leadership must be started from your first day on the job!

15. Advocacy: School Counselor as Advocate • Critical for social justice issues, school climate issues, closing the gap efforts, and power differential that is being abused • Advocacy: speaking for or with others on their behalf • Involves action on the part of the advocate • Is not effective unless you commit to the cause • Involves conversation, interaction with others • A cause is involved-a higher purpose or goal • Speaking on another’s behalf implies that someone is silenced or unable to plead on his/her own behalf

16. Advocacy for Systemic Issues: Social Justice • School Counselors are charged with addressing systemic issues that impede students’ academic, career, and personal/social development • Being an advocate also extends to diverse colleagues in the school • Being aware of diversity issues in the school can make school counselors more aware of situations requiring advocacy • Monitoring the academic progress of students of diversity- poverty, cultural diversity, second-language issues, etc.. • Being in touch with the climate of the whole school in terms of inclusion/exclusion

17. Collaboration: School Counselors as Collaborator • Engaging and motivating others to work together to help students • Takes hard work • Process relies heavily on effective skills in communication, negotiation, and motivation • Focus on shared responsibility, equal status of players, equal expertise, equal resources, equal input equal decision-making power, inclusivity, tolerance of dynamic process, effective communication, key persons identified, fluid roles and responsibilities, and clear shared goals and values

18. Critical Resources to Support School and Community Partnerships • Comprehensive model proposed to support school and community collaboration that builds on existing theory and Bryan & Henry’s work related to school, family, and community partnerships • Based on premise that in order to be more effective and efficient in addressing issues related to academic and nonacademic barriers, youth development, and educational reform, key stakeholders need to work together

19. Critical Resources to Support School and Community Partnerships • Bryan and Henry’s model for collaborative problem solving has 7 steps: • Preparing to partner- Where do I begin? • Assessing needs and strengths- How do I identify the goals of the partnership? • Coming together- How do I bring partners together? • Creating a shared vision and plan- How do I get everyone on board and on the same page?

20. Critical Resources to Support School and Community Partnerships • Taking action- What will we do and how will we do it? • Evaluating and celebrating success. How will I measure our success? • Maintaining momentum- How will I sustain this partnership?

21. Systemic Change: School Counselor as Systemic Change Agent • The culmination of leadership, advocacy, and collaboration efforts • Requires deconstructing the idea of education to see where the current system privileges some students and oppresses others by denying equitable access to opportunities • Two things need to be considered to see what systemic changes would benefit students and families: • A vision of what education equity looks like (Destination • A way to get there (Your road map)

22. Transformative Leadership, Accountability Leadership, and Systemic Change • Four steps to seeing oppressive systems within the school: • Use disaggregated data to understand how various demographics in the student population compare to others • See behind the data to see the dynamics of educational hegemony, when negative social messages about diverse persons dominate the school and suppress educational success

23. Transformative Leadership, Accountability Leadership, and Systemic Change • Lead, advocate, and collaborate to make changes happen in the school • Collect data to document the student's’ success as a result of the systemic changes

24. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration: Examples and Issues • School counselors coordinate programs for students in three domains: • Academic Development • Academic excellence award programs, peer tutoring, Academic Olympic games, new student orientation, transition programs, academic intervention for non-passing students, portfolios, authentic assessments

25. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration: Examples and Issues • Career Development • Mentoring programs in professions and trades, career days, career interest testing programs, school-to-work/career programs, career cluster programming • Personal/Social Development • Advisor for student groups, peer mediation programs, peer mentoring programs, community service programs, community service programs, etc..

26. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration with Parents • Schools must develop flexible hours to meet the needs of working parents, develop family advocacy programs and parent inclusion programs within the school, and develop a family space within the school where parents and families can feel comfortable and safe • School Counselors must work extensively with parents/caregivers to be successful

27. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration with School Colleagues • Leadership and advocacy with partners in the school and district include: • Coordinating various teams to address the systemic issues of students • Coordinating the work of special educators and other professionals in the schools • Integrate services of all school-based mental health providers

28. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration with School Colleagues • Better integrate the services of the school counselor and school psychologist • Lead and coordinate evaluations of the school climate • Lead and advocate for employee assistance-like services for school employees

29. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration with School Colleagues • Variety as the spice of life: Administrative tasks • Some school counselors become involved in non-counseling activities • System Support Activities • Data collection to evaluate and improve the program, service on committees and advisory boards and fair-share responsibilities • Completing these tasks give counselors greater credibility with teachers • Tasks may become unbalanced- can deplete time from professional tasks

30. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration with Community Colleagues • Programs that utilize community resources to accomplish the goals of the school counseling program include: • Mentoring Programs • Community Mapping • Interagency Collaboration • School/Community Collaboration • Youth Services Teams for At-Risk Youth

31. Leadership, Advocacy, and Collaboration with Community Colleagues • There are barriers to collaboration of services with community professionals including: • Outdated ideas about the role of the counselor or school, site-focused school administrators, turf issues, professional obsolescence, and overloads of “administrivia”