Education Support is a UK charity “dedicated to improving the mental health and wellbeing of the education workforce.” It was founded in 1877 as a benevolent fund for teachers and today supports teaching assistants, teachers, lecturers and staff in further and higher education.
Support your child’s learning by providing a healthy home environment that includes brain-boosting meals, restorative sleep and a distraction-free study space. Communicate openly and regularly with your children about their school experience.
Academic Advising
Academic advising provides students with the opportunity to explore options for their education. These advisors often have an extensive knowledge of the school’s resources, so they can provide students with appropriate referral services as needed. They are also trained to help students connect their academic experiences with life/educational/career goals/aspirations and to support them in developing, meeting, and achieving those goals/aspirations.
Until recently, many institutions and academic cultures conceived of academic advising as a prescriptive process. The idea was that advisers would tell students what to do, and the students, in turn, would follow the advice.
The prescriptive model is at odds with developmental approaches to advising, which recognize that both students and advisers learn best through goal-setting and mutual exchange of information. It can also disempower students by privileging adviser knowledge over student growth needs. Academic advising should promote a student-centered, relationship-based approach, and should respect students’ views, values and cultures. (NACADA 2017a). Students often turn to peers or family members for advising, however, and they may not be aware of the advising options available to them at the college.
Guidance Counselors
School counselors provide guidance for a student’s educational and personal life. They may be available for help with a variety of issues including bullying, drug abuse, depression or youth homelessness. They are also able to offer advice on how to overcome academic problems or achieve career goals.
A perceptive and understanding nature is key to the counseling profession. Students often open up to their counselors with personal and emotional problems that they are unable to share with their parents or teachers. This can be emotionally exhausting for new school counselors.
Individuals who are interested in becoming school counselors can complete a master’s degree in counseling. Online programs allow for flexibility in scheduling. Many schools have specializations in areas such as bullying specialist, career awareness or mental health. These specializations can give a school counselor a competitive edge in the job market. They can also earn additional certifications in specific subjects. This will demonstrate a higher level of expertise to employers.
ESL Specialists
ESL specialists provide educational support for students who have primary language competence in English but need to build their fluency in the language. They work with a range of student groups, including high school and college students who want to gain employment in the United States or for other reasons.
Often, these professionals are familiar not only with the ESOL standards of their state but also with those of the language arts and other content areas. They collaborate with classroom teachers on a regular basis to improve student learning, as well as assisting in the preparation of professional development opportunities for educators.
Several of the themes that emerged in administrators’ responses to this content analysis included improving the collaboration between ESL teachers and mainstream classroom teachers. In some cases, the need to address this issue may be the most important aspect of an ESOL administrator’s job. In addition, ESOL specialists are often responsible for providing testing accommodations during district-wide and state standardized tests.
Library and Media Services
School library media specialists are teachers, leaders, information specialists, collaborative partners and program administrators. They are the heart of the school and play a critical role in developing students as tech-savvy, independent lifelong learners.
They promote and support inquiry and research in all content areas to develop students who are college, career, and “life” ready. They are also the “digital content brokers” weaving technology and online resources throughout curriculum and instruction, modeling and supporting 21st century learning skills.
Library and media services offer a wide variety of educational resources to help students become information literate people who know how knowledge is organized, can find what they are looking for when they need it and understand that information should be sourced appropriately and ethically. The IU13 IMS program offers a variety of professional development programs to meet the needs of district staff including librarians, media specialists, and technology coordinators/integrators. These meetings are offered on a monthly basis and are facilitated by IMS staff.