The Stratford Middle School counseling program believes all students experience significant developmental stages during early adolescence. Each student develops, learns and changes at a different rate. Our counseling program recognizes that students are faced with challenges, decisions and opportunities in an ever-changing society. The major function of our school counseling program is to prepare ALL students to meet their own specific needs-academic, vocational, personal and social.

Comprehensive developmental school counseling is designed to respond to the developmental needs of ALL students in the school district. The developmental approach is founded on the belief that individuals experience general stages of personal/social growth and that school guidance programs must be structured to anticipate and fulfill the academic, career, and personal/social needs of all students. The emphasis in a developmental guidance program shifts from working with individuals to working with all students through classroom guidance activities and structured group experiences.

The emphasis also shifts from remediation to prevention, from crisis based to a planned orientation, and from unplanned and unstructured approaches that delivers a guidance curriculum and individual planning sessions to all students.

1. Promotes knowledge and assistance in career exploration.

2. Develops decision-making skills.

3. Increases knowledge of self and others.

4. Broadens knowledge of our changing world.

5. Increases opportunities for counselor-student intereaction.

1. Provides support for parents regarding their child's educational development.

2. Develops a system for a child's long-range planning.

3. Increases opportunities for parent/counselor interaction.

4. Enables parents to obtain resources when needed.