MTTC School Counselor (051) cheat sheet

ASCA Ethical Standards: dual relationships are avoided unless unavoidable; when unavoidable, the counselor must obtain informed consent, consult, document, and transfer the student if objectivity is compromised.

Confidentiality limits that must be disclosed at the outset: danger to self, danger to others, abuse or neglect of a minor, and court orders; state statutes and district policy define the exact reporting duties.

FERPA grants parents rights to inspect education records until the student turns 18 or enters postsecondary school; sole-possession notes kept by the counselor are generally not education records.

Informed consent for counseling minors requires developmentally appropriate assent from the student plus legal guardian permission, and it must name the limits of confidentiality.

Scope of practice: school counselors do not diagnose mental disorders or provide long-term therapy; they refer, consult, and coordinate with community providers.

A written referral and follow-up record is the standard response to suspected abuse or suicidal ideation; verbal notification alone is insufficient documentation.

Record-keeping rule: keep separate working notes from the cumulative education record, store both securely, and release only with signed authorization or legal mandate.

Malpractice exposure rises with failure to refer, failure to document, and breach of confidentiality; supervision and consultation are the standard risk-reduction steps.

The ASCA position on student confidentiality with minors: the counselor balances the student's privacy with the parents' legal right to information, disclosing when safety requires it.

Piaget's stages and grade bands: sensorimotor (0-2), preoperational (2-7), concrete operational (7-11), formal operational (11+); abstract, hypothetical reasoning typically emerges in early adolescence.

Erikson's school-age task is industry versus inferiority (approximately 6-12); the adolescent task is identity versus role confusion (approximately 12-18), resolved through exploration.

Kohlberg's preconventional (obedience, self-interest), conventional (approval, law and order), and postconventional (social contract, universal principles) levels predict how students justify peer conflicts.

Maslow's hierarchy: physiological and safety needs precede belonging, esteem, and self-actualization; unmet safety or belonging needs suppress academic engagement.

Vygotsky's zone of proximal development lies between independent performance and assisted performance; scaffolding is withdrawn as competence grows.

Bronfenbrenner's ecological model: microsystem (family, classroom), mesosystem (home-school links), exosystem (parent workplace, district policy), macrosystem (culture), chronosystem (time).

Bandura's social learning: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation drive modeled behavior; self-efficacy predicts persistence more strongly than prior achievement alone.

Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg: an ethic of care orientation, focused on relationships and responsibility, is not a lower stage than an ethic of justice.

Typical developmental red flags for referral: sudden decline in grades, withdrawal from peers, sleep or appetite change, and self-harm marks, especially when clustered.

ASCA National Model components: define (mission, program goals, student standards), manage (calendar, use-of-time, advisory council), deliver (direct and indirect services), and assess (data, program results).

Recommended use-of-time for school counselors: at least 80 percent in direct and indirect services to students; the remainder in program planning, school support, and fair-share responsibilities.

Direct services = instruction (classroom lessons), appraisal and advisement, and counseling (individual and small group); indirect services = referral, consultation, and collaboration on the student's behalf.

A data-driven program uses three data types: participation (who attended), mindsets and behaviors (what changed), and results or achievement data (outcome effect).

Closing-the-gap action plans target a specific achievement, attendance, or discipline discrepancy between student groups and specify interventions, timeline, and measured outcome.

Annual agreements and the school counseling calendar are negotiated with the principal and published so that noncounseling duties are transparent and bounded.

Small-group counseling follows a curriculum with a stated goal, screening criteria, a fixed number of sessions, and pre/post measurement.

A core curriculum lesson plan names the ASCA student standard, the objective, the activity, and the evaluation method; lessons are delivered to all students, not only referred ones.

Program audits compare current practice with the ASCA model components and produce a written action plan for the next school year.

Consultation model stages: identify the problem, analyze the setting and student, plan the intervention, implement, and evaluate; the consultee retains responsibility for the student.

A student support team or MTSS framework uses three tiers: universal (Tier 1), targeted small group (Tier 2), and intensive individualized (Tier 3), with progress monitoring at each tier.

Effective teaming requires role clarity, a shared measurable goal, defined meeting norms, and a written record of decisions and owners.

Program evaluation designs: needs assessment (before), process or implementation evaluation (during), and outcome evaluation (after), each answering a different question.

Perception data (surveys of students, staff, parents) measure how stakeholders experience the program; results data measure attendance, behavior, and achievement changes.

A logic model links inputs, activities, outputs, and short- and long-term outcomes; it is the tool for showing why a program activity should produce a result.

When reporting to stakeholders, present baseline, comparison group or prior-year data, effect size or percentage change, and limitations together.

Confidentiality in team meetings: share only the minimum necessary information, and obtain parental consent before involving outside providers except where law requires otherwise.

A school counseling advisory council includes students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community members; it reviews program goals, data, and results annually.