Career Counseling Remshard, Michael. (1 Term Paper

A high school counselor advising a highly motivated student about preparing to apply to college may need to provide advice about narrowing down an appropriate list of colleges, help the student manage the stress and time pressures of the application process, and determine how best to market the student to a school -- in short, primarily fulfilling the supporting and delegating functions of Step Two. The same counselor dealing with an unmotivated student might have to work with the student first to find out why and if he or she wants to go to college at all and actively motivate the student to take constructive steps in planning his or her life outside of high school in ways similar to the author's behavior with his class of at-risk youths.

While with the highly motivated student, the counselor might seem overly directive if he or she pressed the student with many questions such as 'why do you want to go to a small school, do you want to stay close to home, how do you envision your freshman year' and even cause the student to feel more anxiety.With a less motivated student, asking questions about 'what do you want to get out of this session' might be the only way to enable the student to feel as if college is a possibility. The counselor may have to give the less motivated students assignments to research schools, while the more motivated student might have already done so, and merely need aid in narrowing his or her list.

In short, there is no one counseling prescription when dealing with students. This statement may seem obvious, although it bears reiterating, and perhaps the most important and innovative aspect of the a.C.T. model is the value of letting the student set the agenda as a motivational technique, even with a seemingly less capable student, so the student will become more engaged with the process......