GMS School Counseling

School counseling is a role that has changed quite a bit over the years. School counselors provide a comprehensive school counseling program that meets the social/emotional, academic, and vocational needs of all students. School Counselors deliver direct student services via three central methods: classroom lessons, small group counseling, and individual student planning/counseling. The school counselor is also available to provide consultation to teachers and parents as needed.

 For more information on social emotional learning and assessment or a variety of other concerns that may impact your student, please see the helpful links in the menu on the right side of this page. 

The school counselor for Griffin Memorial School is Jennifer Hayes. She can be contacted by phone at 424-5931 x 1106, or via email at [email protected].

Confidentiality

School counselors do not always call home if a student chooses to come talk with us. Students need to know that there is a safe person in the building with whom they can connect with when needed. Trust and rapport is established between counselor and student and we always let students know that there is a level of confidentiality. We do inform students that there are limits to confidentiality, however. Those limits include:

1.  If a child states that they want to hurt themselves.

2.  If a child states that they want to hurt someone else.

3. If a child states that someone is hurting them.

If it becomes necessary to break confidentiality, we typically let the student know that we need to let other adults know what is going on because our number one job is student safety. Other times, if one of the rules of confidentiality is not broken, but a school counselor feels like a parent/guardian needs to know about a situation, we will explain that we are concerned and because of that, we are going to call home.

Most times, what the student says in our office, stays in our office.