To be effective, school counselors must build a relationship of trust with the students under their charge. Assist your pre-service counselors in learning effective trust-building techniques by engaging them in the composition of a fostering trust paper. Instruct your counseling students to research ways in which counselors can work to build a trusting relationship with their students. Ask the counseling students to compose a paper in which they explain each method they gathered information about and compare the effectiveness of the methods discussed. Instruct the counselors to conclude their paper by stating which method they feel is most effective and which they will, therefore, adopt in their counseling.
Contemporary students often have to deal with dangers that arise from the use of technology. Many teens fall victim to cyber-bullying or issues with "sexting" and other inappropriate digital communication. Counselors in today's schools must help students avoid these potential problems. Instruct your pre-service counselors to develop a campaign to impart information about the dangers of technology to their pupils. Ask each pre-service counselor to create a brochure and a poster, as well as prepare a lesson that outlines the dangers of engaging in unsavory digital communication. Remind counselors that, when they enter the profession, they can use tools of this type to impart information to their students.
Counselors are often responsible for planning student orientation programming. Give your pre-service counselors the opportunity to practice their program planning skills by engaging them in an orientation program planning project. Ask each counselor to create an schedule for a hypothetical student orientation. Ask the counselors to pair their schedule with an explanation of what would happen during each step of the orientation process, clearly explaining what information they would share with students and how they would go about sharing that information. Allow the counselors to present their program schedule and explanation to their peers, explaining the reasons for their choices when devising their orientation schedules.