TEACHER INTERVIEW Portales High School September 2, 1992 Q. How long have you been teaching or counseling, totally altogether? A. I've been in counseling about 28 years and I taught four years. Q. What did you teach? A. Math. At a junior high and then a high school. Q. And how long have you been at this school? A. This school, 11 years. I've been in the Scottsdale District twenty-six years. Q. Influenced by principal? A. Probably when we work with registration and the only time I can think would be in a situation where the procedures were determined and influenced by the way the principal wanted it to happen. But I would say that would be the only time that I could think of something like that where we would be dealing with procedures and maybe information that we would give out. In terms of how I work with students, I would have a hard time coming up with something on this. Q. Influenced by superintendent? A. No. Q. And you are the department chair? A. Yes. Q. Do you have an influence on other school counselors who work with kids? A. Within this school? Definitely yes. Because we influence each other in that sense because we discuss philosophy and we discuss how you would handle a situation, so we have a, we work, in that sense we are working very much as a team and we, I happen to be in a situation here where the three of us are really philosophically in tune with how you deal with issues and what our role is and so forth. So its real positive you know and I've been in situations where that's not been quite as true because you have a broader philosophy. If you have a larger department you sometimes have that. Q. Would you then be influenced by a department chair? A. I don't know how, we're using the word influence I guess when I was first starting my counseling in the high school, I had a department chair that was influential in terms of helping me to learn some of the things and how you deal with issues. Q. Influence might be effecting decisions that you make because the department chair has certain expectations. A. No. Q. Influence of state or federal programs? A. The only, I've not dealt with this but if it were to come up it would be in a situation where you would be dealing with abuse. Where you would, where the confidentiality would go out the window and you would be dealing with having to report something like that. I've not been in that situation, but you know, that would be the one thing that I could think of, that would be a dictate. Q. How about from the superintendent? A. Huh-uh. Q. Any legal or judicial judgements? A. No, that would be with the abuse situation again. That is the only one I could think of. Q. Parents. Influence or affected your work life? A. Well, they make it difficult when the kids are in trouble. No, not really. Q. Influenced by parents? A. Some of our programs and some of the things we offer to students and parents alike have come from expressed needs that they have so that, for example, we have developed a college selection program and we've developed a college fair that we work with the parents on the college fair not the college selection program, but we developed those based on needs and requests of parents. We've developed, we've done some things that as related to adjusting to high school and _________ that have come from parents expressed concerns about students adjusting to high school and so on. I can't think of anything now. But those would be the types of things because we work with our parent group closely to have programs and meet their needs too, so that would be the only way they have been involved in this or that. Q. Influenced by colleges for example. How colleges effect the curriculum of the school, testing? A. ______________ work for colleges. I mean a lot of information comes through us and we work real hard to disseminate that. In terms of having a direct impact on what we do in counseling other than being sure that we're getting the correct information and advising students correctly in relationship to course selection and so forth, I can't think of any other way they have made any, or any way that they've made any dictates. Q. In advising students on course selection, you're basing the advice to students on what courses to choose to fit the colleges that they want to apply to, so that would be a back door way that the colleges effect---? A. Yes. That would be, I think that's true because what you're looking at, and we have a large percent of students who are planning to go on to college, so what they need to know is what do they need to do to get there and what are they looking at, and that means what kinds of courses they take, what kinds of grades that they need and then following that up with what kinds of things they have to do for an application, what kinds of tests that they have to take and so on. We don't give the tests here but we just give the information so we're not involved in doing the testing because the colleges asked for it. But our curriculum is geared to meeting those needs of students who want to go on to college. Q. Influenced by professional organizations? A. No, except we went on strike one time. That was a long time ago. That was in '66. That's the only thing I can think of. There are things that have happened that, meetings that more of an informational type approach to what's going on. Q. Shaped by the students? A. All the time. I like to think that I have control in what I'm doing but the students needs are what we respond to and so, I would say that 90% or more they have an impact of 90% or more on my work schedule and that means that one, for example, one student might come in and have some personal needs and we deal with that and the next student comes in and we deal with college information and the next student comes in and we deal with a problem in class them not making, so in that sense the students control what my day is like not in terms of how I deal with things but in terms of what I deal with. Q. Describe experience of a creative attempt that was thwarted? A. I'm not sure that would apply. I've never had that experience. When we've wanted to do something we've not had any trouble. We've had cooperation from teachers and administrators at the local level, which is really all we deal with. If we wanted to go into the classroom to work with students, we've never been hampered by that. Q. Failed attempt by any sources to influence you that you resisted? Ways that you worked around this influence? A. There've been attempts at times to restructure the program or restructure the whole department and we've worked through that and done some things differently without totally restructur- ing because we've been able to show that the system we're using is in fact the most efficient and the most effective at this point in time to deal with the needs that we're meeting. So I don't-- Q. Where would that attempt come from? A. From the principal. At one point there had been an attempt district-wide to restructure guidance and that just kind of fell by the wayside because of lack of district leadership or understanding, I'm not quite sure what happened to it there just wasn't any follow-through on it so it was never fully developed and it just kind of dropped, but we've looked at our program here and we've made some changes, some modifications to deal with the needs as they come up because at one time we were four counselors and now we're three and last year, well this year, we were really only two with a part-time person so that means that you have to be creative in terms of how you get the job done because the jobs don't change and we've had free reign on working that out and doing what we need to do. Q. What does bureaucratic restraint mean to you? A. Well, I think its someone who's in an authority position where there's an assistant principal, a principal or district office or board saying what, you know, putting guidelines down what you may or may not do and how you may or may not do it ___________________. Q. Do you feel that you are under bureaucratic constraints in your work life? A. No. Not at all. Q. How would you see your work life different from that in a private school? A. Oh I'm not sure its all that different. I've, because I've worked with the college representatives a lot I've met a lot of people who worked in private schools in a counseling position. If its a day school their roles aren't too different. A lot of the private schools will have, you know, 99% of their kids going on to college and that's what their primary function is where as we have maybe 80% going on to college. So we have a population that has a lot of other needs and so that we're in tune with that population also and we're looking at you know what kinds of vocational programs are out there, what kinds of special programs are there or work programs or so on, that when I talk to the counselors from private schools those are things that they don't usually deal with. So I think what we do is, we have a broader spectrum of student population so we have an added component to our job. Q. Do you deal with disciplining of students? A. No.