Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

As a new professional, it is critical that you connect with, and become a member of, your state school counselor association and the national American School Counselor Association (ASCA). We need an organized body of professionals to help influence what might be happening at the state and national level to influence our profession. Some of you will go on to serve in leadership roles such as State School Counselor Association president, but every school counselor needs to join our associations so that local and national advocacy can happen on our profession's behalf.

Use the templates (Opposition Letters) provided in the resources to find your own advocacy voice. Explain how a specific bill may negatively or positively affect our profession or stakeholders. Think of yourself as a newly appointed school counselor of the year honoree and use your leadership skills to demonstrate your understanding of state or national policy and how it may influence our profession.

For this discussion, complete one of the following:

Write a real letter to your state representative for a current bill under proposal in your state.
Write a practice letter to your state representative that imagines HB 3395 and HB 2658 are being proposed by your own state representatives.
Write a letter to a state or national representative concerning a national policy issue that warrants action. You may locate such an issue via the ASCA Web site.
In the second study in this unit, you prepared for this discussion by reading about Oregon's state legislature and locating the representatives that serve on the education committee in your state. Feel free to review that activity before proceeding with this one. As an aside, due to the advocacy of school counselor professionals, the actual proposed bill was dropped