Thinking and Acting Like a Solution-Focused School Counselor

Learn How to Emphasize Students' Strengths to Help Them Resolve Problems!

This book helps new and experienced school counselors engage with students using a solution-focused approach that stresses cooperation and highlights students' positive attributes to facilitate goal achievement.

Thinking and Acting Like a Solution-Focused School Counselor provides the background and expertise needed to establish collaborative student relationships, identify student skills and abilities, and reframe problems into attainable goals. Emphasizing practice and feedback, Richard D. Parsons includes actual session transcripts to help new and less experienced counselors apply concepts directly to their own practice. Benefits of this book include

A reflective, meaning-making model as a basis for effective school counseling

An introduction to the fundamental principles of solution-focused counseling

Clinical illustrations for identifying and implementing solutions strategies

In-depth, verbatim case studies and guided practice exercises

Like the companion books on behavioral, cognitive, and eclectic school counseling, this concise guide offers the knowledge and skills necessary to help troubled students in need of encouragement and hope.

With session transcripts, in-depth case studies, and practice exercises, this concise guide gives counselors solution-focused techniques that help students use their strengths to attain goals.

Richard D. Parsons is a full professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology at West Chester University. Parsons has over 32 years of university teaching in counselor preparation programs. Prior to his university teaching, he spent 9 years as a school counselor in an inner-city high school. Parsons has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Pennsylvania Counselor of Year award.

Parsons has authored or coauthored over 80 professional articles and books. His most recent books include Counseling strategies that work! Evidenced-based for School Counselors (Allyn & Bacon), The School Counselor as Consultant (Brooks-Cole), Teacher as Reflective Practitioner and Action Researcher (Wadsworth Press), Educational Psychology (Wadsworth Press), The Ethics of Professional Practice (Allyn & Bacon) Counseling Strategies and Intervention Techniques (Allyn & Bacon), and The Skills of Helping (Allyn & Bacon). In addition, Parsons has authored or coauthored three seminal works in the area of psycho-educational consultation: Mental Health Consultation in the Schools (Jossey-Bass), Developing Consultation Skills (Jossey-Bass), and The Skilled Consultant (Allyn & Bacon).

Parsons has a private practice and serves as a consultant to educational institutions and mental health service organizations throughout the tri-state area. He has served as a national consultant to the Council of Independent Colleges, Washington, DC, providing institutions of higher education with assistance in the areas of program development, student support services, pedagogical innovation, and assessment procedures.