Individual Planning and Postsecondary Transitions

Introduction

School counselors must provide and advocate for interventions that promote equity in college access and career readiness. Providing individual planning and facilitating strategies to support students with the postsecondary transition are interventions that offer necessary support and promote college and career readiness.

For this assignment, imagine that you are a school counselor and that you will provide individual planning and transition activities for three students that you will meet in Blooming Park. Your finished product will be a Word document that includes three individual planning forms and your responses to prompts outlined below. Before beginning this assignment, review the scoring guide and linked Resources to ensure that you meet all requirements.

Instructions

Part 1: Meet Your Students and Complete the Individual Planning and Transition Form

Complete the Blooming Park: Individual Planning and Transition activity (linked in Resources), taking notes to help you complete the Individual Planning and Transition Form (linked in Resources).

In this part of the assignment, please address the following:

• Apply developmentally appropriate approaches to college and career counseling while meeting with three of your high school students for individual planning.
• Listen carefully to your students and enter all relevant information on each Individual Transition and Planning Form.
  • Be certain to fully complete the top Academic Planning portion of the form based on what you learned about the student in Blooming Park.
  • Complete the bottom portion of the form, Postsecondary and Transition Planning, based on your ideas regarding this planning. Some of the necessary information may not have been provided in the Blooming Park interviews, so use your imagination and creativity to complete this section with additional information based on educated guesses regarding each student. This will help make the process more realistic and practical. Please note that not all content will pertain to each student.

Part 2: Individual Student Planning, Advocacy, and Promotion of Equity

• Identify at least one developmentally appropriate career counseling assessment you would use for each student and provide a rationale to support your choice of assessment.
• For each student, describe how you will use what you learned during the individual planning meeting to target the gap in college access for this particular student and others at the school (such as students with disabilities, LGBTQ students, socioeconomic disadvantages, racial or ethnic considerations, and special populations).
• For each student, identify strategies you will use to facilitate their postsecondary transition based on information sharing during the individual planning meeting. For example, you may address interventions for career, academic, or social/emotional development, as well as interventions for college/noncollege, as applicable.

Part 3: Putting It All Together

After completing the individual planning meetings, consider the developmental needs of high school students and consider strategies for facilitating postsecondary transitions for all students.

• What strategies will you use to facilitate school and postsecondary transitions for all students?
  • Be sure to briefly address the academic, social/emotional, and career development needs of all students while supporting them in the postsecondary transition.
• How will you increase promotion and graduation rates through developmentally appropriate career counseling interventions and assessments?
• How could individual planning promote equity in student achievement and college access?
• How will you address internalized oppression and focus on advocacy at a systemic level to promote equity in college access and career readiness?
  • Address district, state, and federal policies related to equity.
• What are the legal and ethical considerations specific to promoting equity in college access and career readiness for school counselors?
• Describe what you learned about individual and transition planning.

Include all required information within the Individual Planning and Transition Form. Your assignment must include the three individual planning forms and your responses to all prompts outlined.

Additional Requirements

• Written communication: Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional, and consistent with the expectations for members of professional communities. Please ensure that your written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
• Citations: Scholarly support is required to validate your responses to Parts 2 and 3 in the assignment.
• APA format: References and citations should follow current APA style and formatting.
• Length of assignment: No minimum or maximum, but all sections of the template must be completed.

Submission Requirements

You are required to submit your paper to SafeAssign prior to submitting it for grading. Submit your work as a draft to check for any necessary edits.

• Once the assignment is finalized and all edits have been made, submit the final version to your instructor for grading using the following file naming format: Your_Name_AssignmentNumber_Assignment_Title (example: Ima_Learner_u03a1_Assignment_Title).
• Verify you have reviewed your SafeAssign report by providing the following comment in the assignment area: “I verify that I have reviewed the SafeAssign report for this assignment and this work meets academic honesty expectations.”

Resources

• Individual Planning and Postsecondary Transitions Scoring Guide.
• Blooming Park: Individual Planning and Transition.
• Individual Planning and Transition Form [DOCX].
• The School Counselor and Individual Student Planning for Postsecondary Preparation [PDF].
• The School Counselor and Equity for All Students [PDF].
• ASCA National Model: A Framework For School Counseling Programs [PDF].
• ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success: K-12 College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Every Student [PDF].
• Eight Components of College and Career Readiness Counseling.
• High School Counselor’s Guide: Eight Components of College and Career Readiness Counseling [PDF].