Abstract/Program Description: School Counselors can play critical roles in K-12 schools to bring about systemsā change. However, school counselors may experience a dissonance between the training they receive in graduate school and the complex real-world challenges of social justice advocacy work in practice. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the social justice challenges in schools, specifically focusing on how oppression, institutional racism, privilege, power, and implicit bias influence educational outcomes in schools. We will discuss concrete strategies for implementing the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies into existing counselor-training programs to bolster and enhance studentsā ability to engage in social justice advocacy in schools. Specific methods for increasing advocacy self-efficacy in students will be discussed.
To DaVinci, From Imhotep 