With detailed examples of best practices from middle schools across the country, this book features research-based strategies and suggestions for transition programs. It covers the roles of school principals, counselors, classroom teachers, and the central office.

Despite calls for a more preventive and developmental mode of functioning, school counseling has tended to be driven by a reactive and sometimes crisis orientation. Like social workers and school, counseling, and clinical psychologists, school counselors typically function to alleviate deficits, often in a small percentage of the students they serve. Although this orientation has served school counselors well in many instances, it is not empowering, it does not serve all students, and it d...