On the first day of every trimester, it is a safe bet that you will hear students sighing and groaning, even on a minimum day. They criticize their new trimester classes that they signed up for and then decide they disliked, or the courses that they did not even pick. So, to try to fix their schedules, students rush to the counselor’s office.
Counselors have the power to make or break a student’s trimester by placing students in classes where they will succeed and meet their academic goals, however, there seems to be no consistency between counselors on schedule changes.
Students are only given one counselor based on the last name alphabetical order and are not allowed to switch counselors.
Students should be able to switch counselors and they should all be flexible, consistent, and better with availability when students need to meet with their counselors.
Some counselors let students change their classes or let them leave a class for an off-roll but others give students as much of an opportunity to have the classes they want. Rules should be changed that would allow counselors to be more flexible in the rules that apply to dropping and getting into classes, students prefer counselors to help them get into the classes they want and need.
If these rules were altered it would not put counselors in a hard situation to where the counselors give different answers to students because some go by the rules and some only go by some of them.
For example, one counselor can let a student switch out of an AP class that they do not like, or find to difficult, and switch into an easier class but a different counselor will not let a student switch because of the contract the students sign at the beginning of the year stating students are going to take and stay in the AP class.
Getting hold of counselors can be difficult when there are only four for over 2,000 students. Poway High can always use more counselors, not only for the benefit of the counselors but for students as well. To be able to afford more counselors for the school we would have to move school events like prom, and homecoming to at the school in order to get the support of more counselors for the school.
Students’ only priority when meeting with counselors is usually their classes, and when they are not available or it takes time to get a hold of one, they need to remember that each counselor has over 500 students they are responsible for their classes.
Counselors get overworked because of how many students they need to talk to, especially during the new trimester and before the new school year.
Switching counselors and having all counselors that are flexible, consistent and available for students in order for them to be successful will not only benefit the students but help counselors not feel conflicted over rules or stressed about their schedules.
