Guidance

The current state content standards were approved by the NC State Board of Education in 2010, with required implementation for schools in 2012. Guidance Essential Standards are designed and intended to be utilized by any educator to support the overall cognitive, career and personal/social development of every student. School counselors collaborate with teachers and other school personnel to help facilitate delivery and integration of these standards, not only providing activities and services themselves, but also helping classroom teachers and other educators to better understand how they can integrate Guidance Essential Standards into the content they are already teaching.

The NC Guidance Essential Standards are intended for the following purposes and audiences:

• Classroom Instruction by the school counselor and/or classroom teacher (e.g. a teacher integrating character education into a social studies lesson; a special class discussion led by the school counselor who provides instructional input on a timely issue, such as cyber bullying, driving while texting, positive behavior in general, or the undergraduate admissions process)
• Individual Counseling by the school counselor (e.g., the school counselor and individual student engaged in counseling about that one student’s personal concerns and/or academic issues)
• Group Counseling by the school counselor (e.g., the school counselor and a group of students who are meeting in a group session as they deal with habitual attendance issues or with forming healthier friendships or with the need for more effective coping skills as they deal with a loss)
• Professional Development (e.g., use of these standards by school counselors for Professional Learning Community (PLC) sessions and for whole school staff informational presentations)

The support documents included here are in alphabetical order, not student developmental order. The appropriate developmental order of the Guidance Essential Standards K-12 are:

• RED - Readiness/Exploratory/Discovery
• EEE - Early Emergent/Emergent
• P - Progressing
• EI - Early Independent
• I - Independent