The Needs of Students in a Boarding School Setting - Essay Example

These activities will impliedly come from the office of the guidance counselor who is adept in designing life course strategies according to the stages of development that an individual or a particular group of people undertakes. There is thus, a necessity for the boarding school to be sensitive and be attuned to the needs of the students who have to face the necessary adjustments to the new surroundings rendered by their studies and the ones caused by their departure from their families towards living an independent life.

Students in boarding school settings need to take care not only of their studies but of their everyday life as well. Taking care of their own belongings is a primary issue, such as washing their clothes or bringing them to the laundry store, cooking their own food or buying them, making sure that their toiletries are complete and are not running out of stock, and the like. All of these things rival with the attention that they should give to their studies, indicating that they need a great deal of time management in order to attend to each chore.

It is important that students are able to manage a relevant level of self-esteem in their new life in the boarding school, as this may be hampered by the adjustments that they go under - new environment, new room, new faces, new friends, new classmates, new subject matters, and new professors. The list is a myriad. The student is left with no option but to overcome all the initial difficulties that pertain to his new environment - otherwise, he goes back to his family and hometown. Self-esteem in the early years had been based on how the important adults in an individual's life feel and care about them, ensuring protection and well-being (Cox 2007).

Significantly, this definition has been revised towards how a person feels about himself, indicating the level of his appreciation of himself. The question of whether self-esteem is put to a 'cliffhanger' is another issue when one enters a boarding school. When he was still a child, the individual was used to being loved and valued by his parents who respond to his cries and smiles (ibid). Hence, whatever pressure or disappointments he may encounter in the boarding school may significantly affect his level of self-trust and self-concept.

This is where the aid and assistance of a counselor is needed. Characteristics of Boarding Schools Private boarding schools are high schools, which are high-powered private schools with a boarding component so that people can come from all over the country and the world. Examples of these are schools like Exeter, Choate, Hotchkiss, Hun, Deerfield, and the like. Since students come from different parts of the country and t