This article discusses a group counseling intervention used to develop and foster resiliency in middle school students by implementing the Achieving Success Everyday (ASE) group counseling model. The authors aimed to discover what impact this group counseling intervention, which focused on resiliency characteristics, would have on students'…

This study explored how certain personality traits, behaviors, and social status may be associated with who is targeted as a victim of peer aggression. The sample consisted of 233 students in sixth through eighth grades from rural communities. Results indicate that symptoms of anxiety, a high sense of inadequacy, and elevated social stress are…

This research explored the career beliefs of inner-city adolescents (N = 97). Results identified six types of beliefs: success is related to effort, job satisfaction, work interest and liking, flexibility/adaptability, achievement and persistence, and toleration of uncertainty. A majority of these young people believed that their success was not…

This study explored relations between culturally relevant stressors (i.e., urban hassles, perceived discrimination) and subjective well-being (SWB; i.e., positive/ negative affect, life satisfaction) to examine whether ethnic identity and/or coping strategies would serve as moderators of the relations between stress and SWB for 157 urban, ethnic…

Many career and educational plans are made well before high school graduation. School counselors' efforts to support these plans are limited by the lack of assessments of middle school students' college-going beliefs. Development of the College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale for middle school students is described in this article. Initial evidence of…

This article describes a middle school counseling department's journey and commitment to use data to seek more effective and efficient ways to provide comprehensive school counseling services to its diverse student population. Specifically, the study details the process used to design focused accountability questions that measured the…

This article examines the potential individual characteristics and environmental protective factors that promote academic resilience among impoverished eighth-grade students in Turkey. Study results revealed that home high expectations, school caring relationships and high expectations, and peer caring relationships were the prominent external…

The study in this article examined gender and ethnic differences in the development of Holland (1997) personality types among inner-city adolescents. Results showed gender but not ethnic differences in vocational personality types and their predictors, and suggest different pathways to the development of these types for boys and girls. Suggestions…

What is the impact of natural disasters on students' statewide assessment scores? To answer this question, Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) scores of 55,881 students in grades 4 through 10 were analyzed to determine if there were significant decreases after the 2004 hurricanes. Results reveal that there was statistical but no practical…

Student achievement was compared between Washington State middle schools with comprehensive school counseling programs (CSCPs) and those without. Statistically controlling for socioeconomic status, multivariate analyses of covariance revealed minimal differences between students in CSCP and non-CSCP schools. Significant score differences emerged,…

During the past decade, there has been an increasing gender achievement gap with male students lagging behind their female counterparts on a number of important indicators of school success. This article examines recommendations and strategies for school counselors working with middle school boys to enhance the learning environment, to promote…

Investigating variables associated with the school success and educational resilience of urban youth of color should be a high priority because of the persistent achievement gap in the United States. The current study examined individual and peer factors' relation to the school engagement of 132 seventh- and eighth-grade students from a diverse…

This article presents the results of an evaluation conducted by two middle school counselors, in collaboration with university researchers, to assess the effectiveness of a classroom intervention designed to impact academic achievement. The intervention utilized was a standardized conflict resolution curriculum, which then was linked to…

How can middle school counselors identify bullies? This study compared two methods of identifying bullies in a sample of 386 middle school students. A peer nomination survey identified many more bullies than did student self-report. Moreover, self-reported and peer nominated bullies differed in their types of bullying behaviors, level of general…

This study examined the correlates and predictors of conflict resolution styles in a sample of urban seventh and eighth graders. Girls were found to rely on verbal assertion more frequently and aggressiveness less frequently than boys in the sample. Self-efficacy and self-control were found to be significant predictors of conflict resolution…