Guidance & Counseling

The socio-emotional well-being and development of each child is an important part of Nido’s curriculum. Nido’s Elementary School Guidance and Counseling Team offers support in accordance with the four primary interventions prescribed by the American School Counselor Association: Counseling, Consultation, Classroom Guidance, and Coordination. Our team members are professionally trained counselors and psychologists whose mission is to provide solution-focused counseling services that will maximize each student’s academic, social, and emotional potential.

Our ES Counselors collaborate with parents, teachers, other student support services, and external healthcare providers and specialists to provide support for behavioral and educational concerns.

Student Support Team
Curriculum and Programming

Student Support Team

For individual counseling cases, we use a Student Support Team (SST) model, coordinating with the student’s teachers, parents, any outside specialists he or she might have, and Nido’s Learning Support Team, when warranted. Students are referred to counseling services through self-referral, at the request of parents or guardians, teachers, staff, and administration, the Student Support Team, and outside specialists, or at the discretion of the counselors, who participate in classroom and recess observations and individual student assessments, in addition to managing curriculum, programming, and individual cases. Parents are an active part of the Guidance and Counseling process and are welcome to make appointments to speak with team members about concerns, with suggestions, or for parenting support.

Curriculum and Programming

We offer monthly student programming focusing on different topics relating to socio-emotional wellness, health, and safety, as well as parenting workshops. Special support for international families and “third culture kids” is provided. Teachers, as the primary point of contact with the students, are provided with in-service training, specialized assistance, and supplemental materials that help them nurture and guide students in the classroom through the important process of socio-emotional maturation.

Classroom Guidance is a core element of our program and of Nido’s social/emotional curriculum. The school values are reinforced throughout the Elementary School, in all classes, in visual aids, and in special Guidance and Counseling programming, and students are asked to consider whether their words and actions are in accordance with this code.

Class meetings are regularly conducted by the classroom teachers. These meetings develop the classroom community and provide a forum for students to raise concerns and collectively solve problems. This cultivates the sense of belonging to the classroom community and school and contributes to the happiness and generosity components of the school’s mission and values.

In instances of relational conflict among students, we facilitate Small Group Guidance so students can begin to develop the skills necessary for resolving these social problems themselves. Students learn to approach relational conflict with the goal of finding a solution, nurturing a more mature understanding of the sources of conflict, the other person's perspective, and the advantages of remaining positive, calm, and constructive throughout the resolution process.