Advice Center for the School Community

The ever-increasing demands that modern society imposes on students and their parents, combined with the students' need for social adjustment, academic achievement and successfully navigating the many risks of everyday life, present a host of challenges to families. In addition, teachers and school staff face similar problems, as they strive to educate and nurture their students. In order for a school to function efficiently and effectively, it must meet these modern-day challenges with the appropriate tools and methods. This project seeks to address these issues by establishing a counseling and advice center to ensure that students, parents, teachers and school staff are able to cope with these external pressures, function to the best of their abilities and maximize the high school experience for the students.

This project at ORT Horowitz Comprehensive High School in Karmiel, Israel, is initially focused on at-risk students and their parents, and will utilize existing school facilities. Recognizing that the most significant factor in an adolescent's functioning and performance is his or her home life, counselors will meet with parents to encourage increased involvement and develop collaborative strategies for improving the student's performance. Counseling services will also be provided to school staff members to prevent burn out, and enable growth and healing at times of personal or professional difficulty-thus enabling teachers to interact with students in a state that is less charged with personal issues. As the project develops, the school will establish an area dedicated to counseling services and expand the scope of services to provide support to all students.

Contributions to this project will allow ORT to:

• Retain professional counseling and advising staff;

• Establish and furnish space dedicated to counseling services;

• Develop individual and group counseling mechanisms to ensure that all students, parents, teachers and staff can perform to the best of their abilities.