The (Death) Life of School Counselors & the Call for Change in Public Education

I was inspired to write this book for many reasons. The current mental health crisis among our youth is at the top of that list of reasons. This problem still exists and yet at times it seems to have disappeared from our social consciousness. I felt compelled to address the misunderstanding that parents, school administrators, school faculty and staff, and the general public have about what a school counselor does day in and day out and the role that schools can really play in addressing the mental health crisis of our youth. Their role is an incredibly important one in the light of the current demands on educational systems and yet what they actually do is often unknown or misunderstood. I am also particularly concerned with the blame that is often placed on parents of school-age students. It doesn’t serve us well to point fingers and blame current parenting trends for the depths our youth now find themselves in. There are a host of other reasons, all with societal roots, that are impacting the mental health of our youth and public education as a whole. The decline in school safety, the decline in the social skills of our youth, and the shortage of K-12 educators are just a few of those reasons. Susan Marshall