Guidance
Department
BLOG - Follow us on Twitter: @whmsguidance
WHO ARE WE?
Your child
is assigned a counselor when they enter WHMS and the same counselor stays with
your child throughout their three years here. One of our many functions is to
help enhance and foster the home to school connection. Please feel free to
contact one of us at 270-8033 if you have a question, need to speak or meet
with a teacher(s) and/or have information to share with us about your
son/daughter.
WHAT DO WE
DO?
Our primary
goal is to promote and enhance student learning. Each counselor has over 350
students and works hard to build connections not only with the students but
with their parents as well. We serve as a liaison between you and your child's
teachers, we welcome and orient new students to Western Hills, provide
transition help from grade 5 to grade 6 and from grade 8 to grade 9. Counselors
do individual counseling, small group counseling, can provide
community/academic resources, work to deliver a developmental guidance lesson
in the classroom and meet with all the academic teams for their grade level.
Counselors
see students on a daily basis and encourage frequent communication. If a
student would like to see their counselor individually, he/she should fill out
an appointment slip and leave it in the counselor's mailbox in the guidance
office. If the request to see a counselor is an emergency, the student should
ask their teacher to be sent to the guidance office where they will be seen
immediately if possible.
FOR YOUR
INFORMATION!
Now that the
year is underway, we have a few reminders…
Help your
child to become accustomed to doing about 60-90 minutes of homework each night
Be sure to
encourage use of the planner, the planner can be used as a means of
communication between home and school and the guidance counselor can help in
facilitating this process (give us a call)
Read through
all of the school information with your child, including their planner to
become familiar with school policy, including discipline, attendance and
homework..
ABSENCES:
For absences
of one, two or three days, students should rely on the "buddy system"
this is to say that they should have the telephone numbers of a few reliable
friends who could inform them on a daily basis of the assignments due. This
will minimize or possibly eliminate the amount of make-up work to be done upon
returning to school.
If your son
or daughter is absent from school for three days AND it appears that they may
miss more school time, please call and request homework. Due to the constraints
on the teachers' schedule we need to allow the teachers 24-hour notice. Work
can be picked up at 2:20 on the day following the request.
Our hope is
that by bridging connections with parents, faculty, and students we can better
serve all students and help in their overall academic success. We look forward
to working with you and your children.
