Guidance Counselling

Guidance Counselling

Helping your child to make decisions

From the day your child enters second level school to the day they leave you will play a central role in assisting them with career, educational and personal/social decisions. Guidance Counsellors support you in this role. Working together is of mutual benefit in coping with the diverse and ever changing values in the home, school and community.


What is guidance?

Your child will make significant decisions while at school. These choices are focused on three key areas:

  • Personal and Social
  • Educational
  • Career


What do guidance counsellors do?

The role of the Guidance Counsellor is to help your child in the process of making these decisions. They do this through guidance classes, activities and individual consultations with your child.


As a parent you can assist through:

  • Consultation with the Guidance Counsellor
  • Individual consultations with the Guidance Counsellor are possible at the request of either party or through referral from other school staff. Don’t wait until a crisis occurs before making an individual appointment
  • Attending Career Meetings/Guidance Briefings

This is one of the most important contributions a parent can make to their child’s career’s education.


Parent/Teacher Meetings

If at all possible both parents should try to attend, as information from progress reports can be very helpful to your child.


Work Experience and Work Shadowing/Placement

Work experience and work shadowing are key parts of Senior Cycle Programmes. By helping students get relevant work experience you are playing an important role in their career development.


Preparation for Work Experience

As a parent you can play a key role in ensuring that work experience placements are a meaningful experience. You can encourage good grooming, time keeping and good work practices.


‘Mock’ Interviews

These sessions help students project the best image of themselves at real interviews. Your support, advice, expertise and experience are very much appreciated.


Career Projects

Students find career projects interesting as they motivate them to research careers thoroughly. You can assist by evaluating work done and using them as an opportunity to get up-skilled in the different modes of career research for yourself, e.g. internet-based research.


Assisting students with Application Forms

Your child needs all the help she/he can get in completing the various forms associated with educational and career options. You can help by checking that they are filled in correctly and by encouraging you daughter/son to talk through their decisions on:

  • Subject options in first year
  • Senior Cycle choices
  • CAO, UCAS, Nursing, FAS and other training agencies
  • Job Applications
  • Work Place Visits

Students love discussing the nice/nasty elements of jobs with real job holders. Your offer of assistance in this is very valuable. A short visit to a workplace can illustrate a career more than a thousand words


Career Talks

Students like hearing jobholders describe careers and work experience. Volunteering to give a career talk will broaden the students’ perspectives of how careers develop over time.


Career Action Plan

Many senior pupils undertake careers explorations during guidance classes. You should encourage your daughter/son to research all areas of interest before visiting their Guidance Counsellor.
A Career Action Plan may be formulated through the student’s own research and consultations with the Guidance Counsellor.

As important decisions may have to be made in areas such as finance and/or living away from home, you should play a supportive role on developing this Career Action Plan.

 

Latest News!

School Year 2019 / 2020

 

College Open Days 2019

Click here to view thw college open days for 2019


School Year 2017 / 2018

We are delighted to be involved with the following Aware programmes for the coming year:

5th year and LCA1/25th year and LCA1/2
Beat the Blues
5th year and LCA1 and 2 students will all receive Aware’s “Beat the Blues” programme this year.  It is a positive mental health programme for senior-cycle students.  

BeattheBlues

The programme explores:
• Principles for good mental health and actions that can help.
• The importance of looking at the positive aspects of our lives.
• Why similar situations impact people in different ways..
• The role of core beliefs.
• How to prevent or recognise depression and anxiety.
• The importance of resilience and how to build it.
• The programme also introduces The Coping Triangle (Hayes 2006, 2011) a useful tool which students can use in everyday situations to help relieve stress and understand what is going on for them.

 

4th Year (TYs)
4th year students will all receive Aware’s “Life Skills for Schools” programme this year.  The programme is designed to help young people learn new ways to deal with concerns and challenges in life. It uses an approach based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which focuses on thinking and behaviour. The programme contains six modules and is delivered over four weeks. The reason the programme takes place over four weeks is to give students time to reflect on the key learning point each week and time to experiment with the ‘new ways of thinking’ presented.
LifeSkillsForSchool

 

26/09/2017

All sixth year and LCA2 students visited the Mid-West Career Fair on Tuesday 26th September.  Higher Education Institutions, UCAS, PLC Colleges, other statutory bodies and voluntary organisations were present as well as representatives from local industry.


School Year 2016 / 2017

18/05/2017
Last Thursday 18th May 2017 a fifth year group went to UCC for their open day.

UCCtrip
UCCtrip5thyrs