Running head: THIS I BELIEVE, SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL

This I Believe, Social Justice for All

Estevo Steven M. Ono

Seattle University

EDUC 520

Monday, August 12, 2013
THIS I BELIEVE, SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL 2
Abstract

The school counseling profession has often been about academic and social support within the
school setting. However, because of structural injustice, school counselors are asked to not just
advocate for students in the school, but by working in and out of the school system. In order to
do so, school counselors need to develop a social justice framework that bridges both advocacy
competency and ethical standards to support students through a holistic approach to equity for all
students. This experience has been attained by my personal multicultural upbringing of Japanese
culture in the context of Brazil and the United States.
Keywords: social justice, structural injustice, multiculturalism, advocacy, counseling
framework.


























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This I Believe, Social Justice for All

As an agent of change, as the school counselor, I strive to bridge advocacy competency
and ethical standards to empower students though a holistic approach and promote equity to
students from all populations. These past two years I have learned much about the role of the
school counselor. At the traditional school counseling field, school counselors have spent much
of their energy within the school building, helping students with academics or even social needs
that relate to what goes on in the school. However, through my experience, I often seen external
factors impending students to thrive within the school system. It is these external systems, like
social economic status, geographical barriers, lack of transportation and social constructs of
racism and prejudice that defile the true need these students have as a deemed laziness in their
part. As Ratts defines it, the helping paradigm has, thus, shifted from a helper-responder model
to a proactive-based model rooted in social justice advocacy (2009, p. 164). In this paper,
entitled This I Believe: Social Justice for all, I will focus on how I, as an agent of change, will
bridge advocacy and ethical standards in the counseling field to help students through a holistic
approach so that all students have equity in access to their education.
Growing up in Brazil as a Japanese descendant, I was often sought out as a stereotype
pushover, smart, and quiet kid who would comply by those of the dominant culture. As a child, I
understood that my people, my culture, was the minority in the society, therefore what I ate or
how I spoke was deemed different. In the school counseling field, my job is to seek out youth
who experience the same prejudice and support them through a holistic approach. The holistic
approach focuses on not just the academic support of a student, but also their social, physical and
emotional support. In the school system, the cause for academic failure, in my view is the lack of
support to the whole student. This is structural injustice (Young, 2011). Structural injustice
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occurs as a consequence of many individuals and institutions acting to pursue their particular
goals and interests (Young, 2011, p. 52). Many students in areas where support systems are not
in place tend to struggle during the school year and yet schools do little to nothing about
supporting students beyond the academic realm. This framework requires counselors to
intervene in the social system when they recognize cultural or institutional barriers that
negatively impede client well-beingthe rationale being that environmental-based problems
require systems-based interventions (Ratts, 2009, p. 164).
In order to do so, school counselors need to adhere to advocacy competencies and ethical
standards set by the American School Counseling Association (ASCA), which states that school
counselors serve as change agents, collaborators and advocates. School counselors must be
proficient in retrieving school data, analyzing it to improve student success and using it to ensure
educational equity for all students (American School Counselor Association, 2005, p. 10).
Furthermore the ASCA model challenges the counselor to seek student success no matter how
comfortable the status quo or how difficult or uncomfortable change may be (ASCA, 2005).
Within this social justice framework, school counselors still adhere to the ethical standards set by
governing school policy and can also advocate for students as a whole person.
When I was eleven years old, my family moved from Brazil to the United States and
settled in southern California in a predominately Latino and Hong Kong Chinese community,
east of Los Angeles. It is in this environment that I experienced most of my cultural isolation and
identity crisis as a youth. As a Latino Asian, I would try to speak in Portuguese to my fellow
Spanish speaking classmates, but what they saw was my skin, my Asian skin and would defer me
to other Asian kids who because I was Japanese, and not Chinese, would not talk to me because I
did not speak English or Chinese. As an immigrant, social justice was not something that I
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understood from the beginning, but even as a minority within minorities, I understood that there
was something that did not treat me as an equal to other students. My lack of English proficiency,
not understand social norms, or even being able to do homework or classwork because of these
social obstacles, my academics spiraled down from when I was a student in Brazil. Growing up
as a minority in Brazil, I knew that I was stereotyped a certain way, I understood as a young
teenager that I could not rely on just being quiet, being the typical Asian student to get by
these stereotypes. As I grew up and understood my multicultural identity, I also came to terms
that a social justice needed to be present in the way I worked in whatever field I would choose to
work in. In Multiculturalism and Social Justice: Two Sides of the Same Coin, Ratts writes, Both
the multicultural and social justice counseling perspectives acknowledge the importance of
diversity and recognize that oppression has a debilitating effect on mental health. Together, both
perspectives promote the need to develop multiculturally and advocacy competent helping
professionals (2011, p. 24). It is because of my multicultural identity that I chose to work as a
school counselor in the social justice framework.
Recently in class, Harros Cycle of Socialization Diagram (1995) was discussed
thoroughly by the students and how each stage is seen in the world around them. When it came
to the point of how reinforcements of messages (whether it be towards majority or minority
populations) resulted in an emotional response, which lead to a change or promotion of status
quo, many of those who represent the majority expressed that they would create change. Though
is an admirable stance, I saw minorities in that room remained quiet, and not respond to the
comments. To me, this showed how powerful the status quo really is and how much it ought to
be changed. In order for true change to happen in the counseling status quo, all must witnessed
social justice, not just those who need it, so that it can be established to all students.
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References

American School Counselor Association (2005). The asca national model: A framework for
school counseling programs, second edition. Alexandria, VA: Author.

Harro, R. (1995). Cycle of socialization diagram. Given: Seattle University, Taylor, P. A. Seattle,
WA: Worksheet print.

Ratts, M. J. (2009). Social justice counseling: Toward the development of a fifth force among
counseling paradigms. Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development,
48, 160-172.

Ratts, M. J. (2011). Multiculturalism and social justice: Two sides of the same coin. Journal of
Multicultural Counseling and Development, 39, 24-37.

Young, I. M. (2011). Responsibility for justice. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.