I'm not part of the team, but I felt compelled to do it anyways.
No, I once dreamed of becoming a guidance counselor. During the sophomore year of high school, (okay, I'll admit, I'm only a senior now...) I knew that I wanted to do something along the lines of helping teenagers. Depressed, anorexic/bulimic, etc., tendencies often manifest themselves in numerous ways - one of them was my desire to make sure that others would not go through with the same thing. What better way to help than be a high school guidance counselor?
I had a few good teachers, but I figured that a good guidance counselor would be so much more beneficial. After all, teachers don't have nearly the sort of power to help that counselors do in touchy situations.
I was soon thrown from that high horse. Very, very quickly and violently.
Reasons?
- In many of the districts in my state, you have to be a teacher first. Guidance counselors are often found when vacancies occur. Both of our current counselors were English teachers.
- My counselor (covering N-Z of the alphabet) mispronounced many words such as plethora and antiquated during our eighth grade orientation speech.
- The other counselor (A-M) works at Wines and Spirits, the name of Pennsylvania's state liquor store chain. Not a bad thing in of itself, but I can't see this sending a very good example to the students.
- Told me I was silly to take the AP English class, when I recieved a 760 on my verbal SAT's, and
- Broke the rule of confidence when he told the majority of the administration (of my very small school... >800 students) of my time spent in an eating disorder clinic.
I'm more into the idea of social work now... but I'm not in college yet. We'll see.
I must say, I am very jealous of RimRod's experience in Why you shouldn't listen to high school guidance counselors. But ultimately, he is right - ymmv.