Elementary School Counseling

The ACS Athens Elementary school promotes and implements a comprehensive developmental school counseling program. The developmental domains of our program include: Academic and Personal/Social-Emotional domains. The elementary school counselor creates an inviting/safe place where students, teachers, and parents feel comfortable to visit and express their joys, and share their concerns.

The Elementary School Counselor:

  • provides early Interventions for personal and social development.
  • helps establish meaningful relationships with adults at school.
  • helps students feel safe in their school environment.
  • develops personal/social skills such as: self-awareness, communication skills, anger management, and conflict resolution.
  • helps students understand themselves better.
  • develops skills for academic success.
  • helps students acquire the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that contribute to effective learning in school and throughout life.

The Elementary School Counselor provides:

Counseling: one-to-one (Individual counseling), and/or small group activities, or guidance seminars (didactic educational) for all students in the classroom setting.

In particular the counselor organizes the following activities:

  • social skills groups for both girls and boys. The primary goal for these groups is to educate the students who are having difficulty making or maintaining friendships. Students also learn proper decision making skills
  • organizes and facilitates guidance seminars for the elementary classroom. The goal is to deliver age/developmentally appropriate psycho-educational topics such as: diversity training, tolerance, respect, caring, kindness, empathy, etc.
  • facilitates/implements the Elementary School Owl-Buddy program for all new students enrolled in grades 3-5. The goal for this program is to ease the transition of all new students. These students will receive reliable sources of information.

Who is the School Counselor?

  • the school counselor has earned advanced degrees in school counseling, is a U.S. certified educator who is trained in counseling theories and practices, human behavior, developmental theory, and is sensitive in social/cultural issues.
  • has experience in age specific developmental stages of student growth and their needs, tasks, related to those stages.
  • is a specialist who believes that children learn best when they feel good about themselves and their relationships with others.
  • believes that the attitudes formed during the Elementary School years will shape their future beliefs towards self, learning and our greater society.