My name is LaTraci Aldridge and I have been designated as the Virtual School Counseling SPIN Facilitator. A little background on why I choose this as a Special Interest. From 2013 until 2018 I worked at completely virtual school in the role that is similar to that a traditional school counselor in a brink and mortar school. Over those 5 years I learned a lot and became very interested in learning more about what a virtual school counselor looks like Are they different from traditional school counselors? Do they still follow the ASCA standards? I knew how I did what I did every day, but what about the other virtual school counselors?
Currently, I am working on my doctorate in Counselor Educator and Supervision and my research focus is Virtual School Counseling. I am researching the roles and functions of virtual school counselors. It is my hope that I will be able to show, through data, that virtual school counselors' roles and functions are very similar to that of traditional counselors. From my own experience, one big difference is that I did have the nuisances that a lot of us have to deal with such as lunch duty, bus duty, etc. I was able to be just a school counselor. That's not to say that there were other things I did have to deal with. As far as similarities my thought process was that I could do just about anything that a traditional counselor did, but I had to put a virtual spin on it.
I look forward to answering any questions you may have about virtual school counseling as well showing any interesting topics under the umbrella of virtual school counseling