Working With Students With Disabilities ─ Preparing School Counselors

Working with special needs students requires special training so counselors can work effectively in a multidisciplinary team environment. Special needs students represent a large portion of the population in which school counselors interact, yet specialized training is limited. Counseling students need to learn the special requirements of these students, how to read reports and specialized legal documents, and they need to know how to collaborate and communicate with peers, educators, parents and other students.Working with Students with Disabilities: Preparing School Counselors aims to provide a comprehensive approach to working with students with disabilities in a school setting. It is grounded in theory and evidence based practices and it addresses the legal statues and educational initiatives such as common core and CACREP. Vicki A. McGinley and Barbara C. Trolley take an active learning approach, which includes reflection questions, activities, and cases throughout the text. The first part presents the various classifications and language associated with special education along with the laws and educational initiatives. The second part address multidisciplinary teams and counselor roles. The third part presents interventions, assessment, counseling and evaluation methods and the fourth part presents special topics.