Avoiding 'Random Acts of Guidance': Strategies for Middle Grades School Counselors That Lead to Lasting Learning

In a successful middle school, school counselors support young adolescents' academic progress and personal wellbeing through a variety of methods. Classroom instruction, or classroom guidance, offers one method of providing such support and features the benefit of allowing middle grades school counselors to reach all students in their schools. However, school counselors often face challenges in designing effective classroom instruction that causes deep, long-term learning and allows students to apply new concepts or skills to their own lives. To achieve lasting learning of key mindsets and behaviors, school counselors' lesson planning must be rooted in the science of how people learn. This article presents four research-based "laws of learning" that will help middle level school counselors avoid creating classroom instruction lessons with unintended barriers to learning in the form of strategies that contradict learning science.