The author, Dr. Syntha Traughber West, Ph.D., enjoys the gift of relating to people of all ages, especially teens. For over thirty years she has helped public school young people, including her own sons, acquire numerous financial aid opportunities for after-school training programs of all kinds. A Baylor University in Waco, Texas, Bachelor of Arts undergraduate, she earned her Master’s and Ph.D. Degrees in Guidance and Counseling from East Texas State University (now Texas A&M University in Commerce). She is licensed as a Texas Professional Counselor, National Certified Counselor, National School Certified Counselor, as well as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She also holds Board Certifications in Traumatic Stress and also Bereavement Trauma.
After spending thirty-six years in public elementary and secondary education, coupled with two separate college internships, she was invited to join a private psychological counseling firm in Tyler where she spent one year in therapeutic office practice in several East Texas counties. While still in the private sector, she was offered the opportunity to become an employee in Tyler’s community mental health network’s Andrews Center, specifically the S.T.A.R. Program, which stands for "Services to Youth at Risk Ages 7-17." The freedom of going into homes and schools allowed her own holistic philosophy of working with entire families in conflict, servicing not only "the client", but also the client’s "significant other(s)" as well. She now conducts an occasional seminar and workshop and publishes. Her "glass half full rather than half empty" daily theme keeps her focused on a positive and progressive note and continually challenged to truly be the very best she can be!
In March 2001 she was voted "Ms. Texas Senior 2001" by a panel of judges in the "Ms. Texas Senior Pageant," the four areas of competition being interview with the judges, talent, evening gown, and philosophy of life. In the 2000 pageant she was honored by her peers as "Ms. Congeniality." She will now represent Texas at the "Ms. American Classic Pageant" to be staged in August in Charlestown, South Carolina.
To be an effective school counselor, one must provide students with the guidance they need to make meaningful and well informed decisions concerning their career plans and educational training alternatives. Unfortunately, without proper guidance, many students mill around taking unrelated courses in high school and college without the knowledge and skills necessary for either post-secondary training or success in the world of work. Too, parental involvement in the planning and development of students’ educational and career planning is crucial to the future of our young people and our economy. Just as students need to be aware of the multitude of career opportunities and options in today’s global workplace, so do their parents and/or guardians. Parental and community involvement provide students with keys to unlock their futures and to close the increasing distance between the country’s workplace needs and the skills and capabilities of our future workforce.
Parents, whether you know it or not, you have always been involved in your children’s career development. Every time you talk about your salary, your workday highs and lows, whether you wear a suit, a tie, uniform, casual clothes, or "work" clothes, you send a message to your children about careers. What you do for a living and how your children perceive you is part of your child’s beginning tunnel vision of the world of work. Therefore it is so important for you as a parent to help your child explore the right courses that match his/her occupational interests. You and your child will benefit immeasurably from finding accurate labor market information about occupations of interest to make sure your child has all of the pieces of the puzzle before making career decisions.
Your school’s guidance office, library, and learning resource centers, coupled with the community’s library, quality work force planning through the local government, learning how to contact your local tech-prep offices, and Department of Commerce retain numerous "demographics" identifying job markets of interest. Your local Chamber of Commerce can lead you to sources of help. There are numerous "Careers & Colleges" magazines geared to the young person’s "talk" with certain occupations highlighted and profiled. The school counselor can show you lists of careers and what subjects in school correspond. The local and surrounding community colleges hold a wealth of information on careers as their placement offices are stationed to connect people with information and jobs. Also community colleges have many continuing education opportunities for short-term training as well as taking courses simply for the fun of it! Visiting the college’s "Career Planning and Placement Services" will do more than just provide information; it will also have job opportunities bulletins of actual job openings posted and how to go about receiving applications and making plans for interviews. Parents, ask your school administrators who attends "Career Education Conferences", and when these same administrators/faculty personnel are going to bring back to the local school community reports on the various workshops and seminars attended.
Helping students explore all of the possible post-secondary training alternatives, and then leading them to choose a course of study that is most appropriate to their abilities and interests, connects school and home in one aim – helping children develop the self-confidence necessary to keep life on balance in order to accomplish their dreams and goals we have directed them to learn how to pursue. School faculties along with parents should share with students their own personal experiences with work interests, work values, and individual career paths. Since career development is a life-long process, a valuable lesson we can teach our children is that their career plans will grow, change, and evolve just as their physical development will!
We counselors and parents want young people to SEE careers up close and personal in and out of school, in the homes and in the environment. We want young people to view people’s actual work habits and attitudes. We want them to learn how to match their aptitudes (and what this means!) with their interests (and what that means!) We want them to be realistic but not to sell themselves short. We don’t want to be the high school counselor of the young man who goes to college to major in fraternities or the young girl who goes to college to major in sororities and/or the Mrs. Degree! We want young people to know which jobs are "things" jobs and which are "people" jobs! And above all, we want young people to figure out where they belong--in a "thing career" or a "people career"!
Helping young people to learn to be flexible in life, to learn to grow and process through past mistakes and successes are goals. We want to teach kindness and the ability to get along with all types of others as being perceptive of others’ feelings and thus getting along with others on the job is key to staying on that job.
If in life’s trip we are negative, it’s probably not going to be a happy trip! Young people are usually so intuitive as to types of personalities school faculties and parents display and can learn this negative behavior certainly without wanting to! Teach these young people to choose peers who bring out the best in the both of them, and on the contrary, sometimes the loudest boos come from the freest seats!
Some parents are "conditional" lovers of their children, that is, "I’ll love you IF THIS OR DO THAT"! Children and young people need internal stability, the kind of stability that keeps a mom and a dad there for these children and not popping in and out with excuses and/or with new significant others taking the place of the children. Children need to grow up in environments where love is a gift given freely, UNCONDITIONALLY! Hug your children and tell them frequently Mommy and Daddy are always there. Parents, if you are loved back after all this giving of yourselves, consider your return gifts being fringe benefits with no strings attached.
"School" parenting should begin when a child begins to form language patterns and develop sentences by teaching your child that school is a wonderful place to be with adults there who truly provide tender loving care (TLC)! Since most of our adult personality patterns have apparently been learned and "fixed" during the first five or so years of life, then why not instill in your children that learning and education can be the same, and that true knowledge comes about in a peaceful, comfortable environment, and then let the school personnel know that you expect NO LESS THAN THIS SORT OF ENVIRONMENTAL TREATMENT FOR YOUR CHILD!
Communicating with your child's teachers, yes even in middle school, even more in high school, can do wonders for you and your child. After all, most educators are parents themselves and want the same as you wherever their children are in school! How many times have I, as counselor-mediator, sponsored a meeting of the minds between school and home (parent and child meeting with me behind closed doors) and watched high school students and their parents come to tears that they didn't talk sooner to get school and home "connected". Parents should know that it is really O.K. for them to be involved with their children ALL THROUGH THEIR SCHOOL YEARS as I have had high school students come to me anticipating a school event and hoping that a parent(s) would be there to support and cheer them on! (The look of a child/young person into the crowd/audience seeking that supportive and loving face of a parent is always there but much more visible in the lower grades when a child gets on the stage and then waves to parents and literally glows all over when parents are there to reciprocate!) This piece of mind that comes from sharing in our children's lives-both in and out of school-cannot be measured; it is a peace that lives within a parent and sustains during those "empty nest" years when children do leave home and we parents are left holding our memories intact. Let them be tender memories and not those regrets that bring pain to the heart and tears to the eyes! After all, our children are like mirrors – they reflect our attitudes in life!
