Supporting Students with Bibiliocounseling

As school counselors, a core part of our vocation is listening to student stories and experiences. For a middle school counselor, a common topic of conversation is transitions. Students are often transitioning from one primary classroom to having six teachers in middle school. Students are also transitioning into puberty. They are learning how to communicate boundaries and also about what it means to be a positive friend. We can help students process through emotions, transitions and traumas using many different methods, but one method I hope to explore this year is bibliocounseling. Bibliocounseling utilities storytelling as a means of allowing for emotional connection and processing. This approach can be helpful as students identify with a character in a story and talk about the character while also reflecting on how their own experiences are similar.

Bibliocounseling is an appealing method to me because it is accessible to students K–12. The books selected can be tailored to be appropriate for the student’s development. I was an avid reader as a child. Books were a way for me to process and find respite from difficult experiences in my own childhood, including the loss of my brothers and familial conflict. I cannot imagine how powerful an adult discussing grief with me would have been, highlighting challenges and successes of a grieving student in a book. School counselors can also use bibliocounseling as a responsive and preventative method for increasing mental health literacy. This approach has been used within the school context on a variety of topics including mindfulness, stress reduction, grief counseling and social skills.

I am currently on the first step in utilizing bibliocounseling within my school counseling program, seeking diverse and thoughtful books. When considering potential books to utilize for bibliotherapy, educators can access many different resources. I personally began a perusal through school counseling blogs and booklists for children. Some of the most helpful resources included Confident Counselors Books We Love for School Counseling, The Good Reads Popular School Counseling Books list, and an expansive teenage reference guide called Bibliotherapy and Underrepresented Issues in Young Adult Literature: A Reference Guide. I am so excited to begin this school year and am looking forward to building curriculum surrounding bibliocounseling.