Masters Thesis

The role of guidance in a school or program serving junior high school and senior high school students who are deaf

Deaf junior high school and senior high school students in many schools and programs for the deaf across the nation are not having adequate guidance services made available to them. The deaf adolescent i s in need (on at least an equal level with hearing students) of guidance services to include such components as personal student counseling, a career development program, a vocational training and guidance program, a co-op 1-rork-study program, a graduate employment program, and college placement services, to cite several examples. Up to this point in time, these programs and other necessary guidance services are being made available to deaf students as a complete, comprehensive, coordinated guidance program in only a limited number of schools and programs for the deaf across the country. Unfortunately, in most cases, these guidance services are not being made available to deaf students at all, or, the responsibility for providing the services is divided up among so many different personnel on t be school's staff as to make the availability of such services haphazard, incidental, and uncoordinated. Therefore, the primary problem is to make available to deaf teenagers a well-coordinated, comprehensive guidance program to meet the individual and specific vocational, psychological, and developmental needs of these students. A secondary problem is that once such a comprehensive and coordinated guidance program h 2.s been initiated in a school or program for the deaf, qualified personnel with a background in counseling the deaf need to be hired to operate the program. Often, good teachers of the deaf are taken out of the classroom to coordinate such guidance programs; but with limited experience in counseling and having been removed from their most comfortable element (the classroom), they find that they cannot really do an adequate job of providing the necessary guidance services. This is not always the case, however, because some teachers have been able to build up a rapport with students where openness and mutual respect abounds and under these conditions, a guidance program can actually be enhanced as students are not afraid to openly discuss their problems or to make use of the available guidance services. This situation is rather infrequent though, and trained guidance and counseling personnel to work with the deaf need to be sought out and recruited to staff such programs. In summation, the first concern i s for all schools or programs to establish a truly comprehensive and well-coordinated guidance program and make its services available to their deaf junior high school and senior high school age students. Secondly, once this type of guidance program is established, it should be staffed by competent, skilled personnel who have had experience or training in guidance or counseling work with the deaf.

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