Why we need wraparound services in our schools

Times have drastically changed since I was a student in high school. I recall being a student in school and having the luxury of being under the care of teachers who not only were concerned about my academics but also my overall well being. This level of care was evident through the manner in which teachers and building administration took time to learn my name and my personal idiosyncrasies to understand when I was not my normal self. In such cases, the remedy was quickly administered and it might have been followed up with a phone call home to my mother to inform her of my day.
Today, due to more incredible demands of teachers and support staff to meet performance standards, the push is more on the side of academics than relationship building. I am fully aware of the expectations placed on educators as well as, for the most part, the premise behind the expectations. However, one important element that is being left out of this equation is relationship building. Due to time constraints and a host of demands, there is very little time afforded to allowing and encouraging staff to build relationships with students to understand when they are not behaving in their normal way. Also the lack of relationships being established creates a barrier for knowing what to in the event of there being an issue with a student that may negatively impact their academic performance. Because I do understand that we are far removed from the times of old, I believe the work of addressing the ever growing social emotional issues students face today may be done using a wraparound approach. This approach may be presented in many forms, but for the most part, it is a collaborative effort of school personnel and service agencies with a mission of serving the most basic physiological and emotional needs of students to remover barriers that impede academic achievement.
School counselors are key players in the development of a program of this nature. We are trained to be fully engaged with and aware of our personal values and personal biases, understand and appreciate the worldview of the student, as well as having a set of culturally appropriate interventions to use in the school setting. Our role as social justice agents is to help create a culture and climate in the school setting to foster understanding for academic potentialities and empowerment opportunities while removing or minimizing the tendencies of lowered expectations based on lack of supports or resources that might easily be remedied thorough a wraparound approach to empower students and level the paying field for increased academic achievement.
An endeavor of this nature involves a collaboration between school counselors, school social workers, students, other school staff, families, and community agencies. In order to determine how to best serve the student communication should take place to determine what services as well as resources might be available to students as well as planning needs to ensue to determine how said services will be rendered. Additionally time must be dedicated to educating school staff of the social emotional and physiological needs of students making them aware of how these challenges might present in the classroom. One final step in this process of developing wraparound services in the school is to develop and implement a common language that shapes school culture as it relates to social emotional learning and the efforts of school personnel to address needs of students beyond academic instruction to remove the stigma of receiving such supports.