College Counseling in the Age of COVID
One of joys of working in a college counseling office is helping our students visualize their future. Clarifying their goals and exploring opportunities, many of which they have never considered. You can see their eyes shift upwards, seeing themselves on a campus, or in a new city, or learning a new language. In the busy life of a high school student, asking them to stop and consider what life beyond high school looks like can be empowering, but sometimes scary as they consider moving from a fairly structured life timeline to one that is now theirs (and their parents) to decide.
Here in Singapore, we do an exercise with our grade 11 students where we ask them to visualize their future lives at age 30. Where will you live? What kind of city will you be in? What does your home or apartment look like? Where are you working? Our students find this challenging to say the least. Teenage brains are not well equipped to think beyond lunchtime, let alone 15 years into the future.
In the past, for our office, the graduates’ immediate future felt predictable as students chose pathways well trodden by their older siblings to recognisable universities or gap year programs. We felt secure in advising our students towards those institutions. But in March 2020, Covid-19 threw all of this into disarray, and the uncertainty of the near future became fraught with thousands of unknowns. Will I be able to enter that country? Will my university be teaching online or in person? Will my parents be willing (or able) to pay $45,000 USD for an online learning experience? Are my gap year travel plans completely blown!?
In this on-going series of articles on students 'returning home', Barbara Chen speaks about supporting third-culture students who may be 'returning' to a home country they have never lived in. Check out her first article on 
The contents of my suitcase are strewn across my bedroom floor, new college swag separated from laundry, toiletries that exploded twice waiting to be cleaned for the third time, and just enough room to maneuver around the bed to sleep and then make it to work in the morning. I've just returned from a week long international counselor fly-in and unfortunately there is just not time between returning home and school on Monday to deal with things like suitcases when you have a week of emails, lesson plans, and looming AP exams to prepare for.
Int'l School of Sacred Heart, Tokyo
By Tim Munnerlyn
By Beau Benson
The British Higher Education system used to be straightforward, certainly for those like me working in British schools and who attended a UK university. However, recent changes in government policy have made steps towards creating a market for university places, with this to change yet further in future years. Though some of my colleagues across the UK find this all quite worrying, for those of us working on an international stage it simply brings the UK into line with the rest of the world. So, from a British counsellor’s perspective here are the key changes to be aware of.
It’s early September and another busy season of assisting, motivating and bribing seniors to complete their college applications on time, is upon us. Oh, where did our summer vacation go? Amidst, the buzz of the hallways as students make their way to classes and teachers revving up their courses; high school counselors must find ways to focus their seniors for the important tasks that awaits them during the fall.
