Ware Junior Senior High School

Ware Junior Senior High School

Principal’s Comments

Ware Junior Senior High School’s Guidance Counselors work diligently to implement a curriculum based on the Massachusetts Model for Comprehensive School Counseling. Counselors work closely with students to ensure that each student is college and career ready. Students are presented with a variety of classroom lessons and assessments, and the information collected from these assessments informs future decisions regarding coursework and other opportunities. The Massachusetts Model for Comprehensive School Counseling facilitates the advancement of students’ interests.

Darren Elwell Principal

Student Results

College and career readiness is a primary focus of our school counseling team. Our students are provided materials for course selection, PSAT, SAT and college and career choices throughout our school-counseling curriculum. One of our goals was to determine the current college and career interests of our students. In order to gather this information the counselors decided to provide an assessment to a target population of students.

We provided a Career Decision-Making assessment to all of the sophomores at Ware Junior Senior High School. The results of the data assisted us in determining the future career planning lessons and activities for our students. Graph 1, representing the results of our assessment, determined that 57.8% percent of the sophomores, who completed the assessment, plan to attend a four-year college/university. 81% of the students who completed the assessment stated that they recommend every student should complete the Career Decision-Making assessment.

Graph #1: Sophomore Student Plans

The Career Decision-Making assessment asked questions regarding specific activities. The students had to rate each activity based on if they liked the activity or disliked the activity. At the end of the assessment, the results provided various career codes. The career codes are areas in which the students would enjoy working in as a career. Based on the assessment, the #1 one rated career code was ‘scientific’. The assessment also provided specific career cluster areas within designated career codes. The top rated career cluster for the 2014-15 sophomore class is social service. The career cluster with the second highest rating is the math and science field.

Graph #2: Sophomore Career Cluster Choices

The results of the Career Decision-Making assessment assisted our school counseling team in determining the current needs of our students. We also had the students choose their future career plan. Out of the results the current most popular career choice among our sophomore class is a police officer.

Graph #3: Sophomore Career Choices

The results of the assessment indicated an increase in the social service as well as in math and science areas. The results also identified that over 50% of the participants plan to attend a four-year college post-high school.

Focus for Improvement

As a result of the Career Decision-Making assessment, we will begin to look at the courses and electives that are being offered to our students. We want to ensure that our students are being provided the knowledge to be successful. College and career readiness is a goal of the school counseling team. We provide students with resources and support with the following areas: college applications, graduation requirements, SAT/ACT/PSAT, financial aid, etc. We will continue to work as a team to deliver the tools and knowledge to prepare our students for their post-secondary options.

In the future, we plan to continue to administer college and career interest inventories to our students. We are currently using Your Plan for the Future, MassCIS and The College Board’s Big Future programs to help our students explore their post-secondary options. Our goal is to continue to develop standards-based lesson plans on college and career readiness. As a team we plan to have comprehensive folders on each student at Ware Junior Senior High School. Each student’s folder will encompass their completed interest and learning style inventories. The individual folders will also contain each student’s Career Decision- Making assessment booklets. The overall goal is for each school counselor to use the gathered data to assist students in class schedules and creating a post-secondary success plan.

Student Support Personnel Team

Mission Statement

At Ware Junior Senior High School counselors strive to collaborate with faculty, staff, administration and the community to assist student development in the academic, career and personal/social domains. We strive to provide a safe and supportive environment where students can, through an extensive exploration of their options, realize their greatest potential, become life-long learners, and responsible contributors to society.

The student support personnel team works to provide academic, personal, and social resources for our students to be successful in their education.

Our team includes the following: