As with any profession, the roles, responsibilities, and foci areas will evolve as the technological and societal needs change. This chapter begins by providing foundational knowledge about the school counseling profession and its historical pathway. Key events in the United States have shaped the profession in recent years, leading to identification of the current trends affecting school counselors. Advancements in technology, increasing responsibilities, and future directions will be discussed.

There are two key foci of the ASCA Student Standards. The first focus is the ASCA Student Standards: Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success: K-12 College-, Career-, and Life-Readiness Standards for Every Student, which are standards used by school counselors to support students’ academic success, social and emotional learning, and college and career readiness. The second focus is the ASCA School Counselor Professional Standards and Competencies, which delineates standards for school counselors’ professional development and promotes the planning, delivery, and evaluation of comprehensive school counseling programs. Moreover, the authors provide examples of school counseling interventions and ways to overcome potential roadblocks for successful implementation, as well as recommendations for integrating social justice advocacy when using the ASCA Student Standards.

Although culturally relevant interventions and social justice advocacy will be integrated throughout the text, this chapter focuses on marginalized communities, antiracism practices, and the Black Lives Matter movement as it relates to serving BIPOC students and discusses the impact of cultural mismatch and culturally incompetent school-based interventions. Resources for cultural awareness, knowledge, and skill development will be discussed, as well as the opportunities for addressing the school-to-prison pipeline, historically underserved populations, and the opportunity gap.

In this chapter, students will explore the concept of strengths-based counseling and related interventions as the various roles and specific interventions are applied through this lens as the very foundation to the work of school counselors. Research-based support for this perspective and practitioner guidance is included. Case studies and scenarios demonstrating the difference between a traditional “deficit-based” perspective where a clinician or counselors initial view of a student is considering a “what’s wrong” approach will be compared to a “what’s going well” approach where school counselors collaborate with school staff and partner with students to build on student strengths to ensure academic success and improvement.

The chapter will serve as an overview of the ASCA National Model and provide a clear connection with the translation from an aspirational ideal of school counseling to the reality of school counseling practice. The four main components of the National Model will be presented, including define, manage, deliver, and assess. This chapter will address and provide examples as to how these components are often offered in current models of PK–12 education—both in brick-and-mortar schools and online academies.

The distress of populations affected by genocide, war, and the specific phenomenon often referred to as “ethnic cleansing” and political violence is typically viewed through the lens of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (the word “war” is used in the rest of this chapter to refer specifically to “ethnic cleansing”). However, there have been increasing critiques of the assumed universal applicability of the trauma paradigm, from psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as anthropologists and sociologists, engaged with individuals and societies affected by mass violence. This chapter reviews how the specific characteristics of genocide, war, and political violence pose challenges to biomedical and Western psychological framings of trauma. It argues the need for greater attention to cultural context, intersecting structural oppressions, and social justice and considers how narrative- and arts-based tools, underpinned by principles drawn from multicultural and decolonial approaches, may assist in this endeavor.

In addition to traumas that heterosexual and cisgender people experience, queer and transgender people face a heterosexist and cissexist culture, in which marginalization and trauma against them is normalized or minimized. In this chapter, the experience of hate crimes and violence, relational and interpersonal trauma, religious based-trauma, and sociocultural and political-based trauma are covered in relation to how it impacts Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) people. Clinical and counseling implications are discussed. The increase in mental health challenges is explained via the minority stress model. Implications for diagnosis and trauma-informed practices for queer and transgender people are discussed. Additionally, the role of the mental health professional as a social justice advocate is explored, including how social justice frameworks can be incorporated in the counseling environment.

In this chapter, the authors review important concepts related to diversity, inclusion, racial power dynamics, and racial justice overall and in school settings. Brief historical reviews of Brown v. Board of Education and the cycle of school segregation accentuate the need for addressing social justice within school settings. This chapter also highlights many other important concepts/theories to promote social justice and equity, including a focus on the strengths perspective, cultural humility and competence, work with diverse families, and consideration for special subpopulations. The chapter provides activities and classroom assignments to engage students in thinking critically about social justice, diversity, and social work practice in schools.

In Chapter 5, the authors review important concepts related to human rights and social and economic justice for school social work practice. This chapter defines human rights based on the principles outlined by the United Nations and reviews key concepts for enacting social justice as fundamental to human rights. The authors examine various forms of justice (e.g., social, economic, environmental, and educational justice) that impact students, their families, and their educational experiences. The authors pay particular attention to the plight of immigrant children or immigrant students. Further explored in this chapter is the role of discrimination in school settings that lead to disproportional representation of marginalized students. Reviews of critical race theory, Latin critical theory, and anti-oppressive social work practice are also highlighted in response to educational and social injustice.

This chapter highlights the important role dialogue plays in the fight for racial justice. It outlines the essential elements of dialogue and presents several models that can be used by educators and community leaders. It also describes how race must be taken into consideration when conducting racial dialogues and offers suggestions on how this can be done. Finally, it describes how dialogue not only increases participants’ awareness of racial justice and advocacy but builds inter/intraracial relationships.