College Counseling to Change the Community
Opportunities-to learn has long been a term used to determine educational inequity between and within schools. As we consider college admission we have expanded our view of opportunities-to learn to include the opportunity-to learn of ones college options. In California, where the counselor-student case load is the second largest in the nation, many students are faced with a reduced opportunity-to learn. The gravity of this situation increases in less affluent areas. Students who arrive at school each morning only after peering into an empty cupboard, a constant reminder of their poverty, depend on the school to provide them with the opportunity-to learn. Counselors are the gate-keepers to a brighter future for these students. Will they receive the counseling they need or only what is allotted to them as 1 of 500? Counselors’ caseloads’ becoming larger is more alarming when considering Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of bounded rationality—which is the reasonable deduction of students’ own opportunities, based on their lived experience. Therefore, for some of our students a counselor may be one of few adults to help them envision a brighter tomorrow. foundation44 programs ensure that added students receive the needed college information so that they may reach their post high school goals. While working with families, schools, and communities we have helped every student who successfully completed the program gain 4-year college admission.