School Counselor

Lake Forest Country Day School (LFCDS) seeks an experienced school counselor starting in August 2021. This individual should be passionate about advocating for and supporting students, skilled in nurturing relationships, and knowledgeable about the developmental needs of children. The individual should be an outstanding communicator and should have a strong background in the clinical skills needed to provide social and emotional education and to support students, faculty, and families.

LFCDS, located on a 30-acre campus about 30 miles north of Chicago, Illinois, is a co-educational, independent day school serving 400 students from age 2 through Grade 8. The School has a long tradition of producing thoughtful, confident, and successful students. Children are known, loved, and challenged at LFCDS, and a state-of-the-art facility provides a remarkable setting for inspired teaching, academic rigor, and attention to individual needs. 

At Lake Forest Country Day School, our mission expresses our promise to attend to individual needs, and our commitment to building an emotionally intelligent school serves to elevate that pledge. We believe that a student’s social and emotional well-being is a direct contributor to academic success.

Job Description

Successful fulfillment of this role requires someone who is clinically astute; collaborative; highly flexible; a self-starter; creative; and adept at working within multiple client systems.  This position will work in collaboration with our current school counselor to bolster existing social and emotional learning curricula and to continue to develop cohesive and developmentally informed social and emotional approaches school-wide. Responsibilities will include the following:

• Conduct individual and group work with students to provide social and emotional support and build skills 
• Work closely with Division Heads, and faculty to address behavioral, emotional, and social concerns and needs
• Attend grade-level team meetings/staffings and advise on best practices for supporting students and families
• Identify and track students with comorbidities and cross-reference caseload with students receiving services from the Learning Development team
• Classroom observations; participating in extracurricular activities, such as field trips
• Support the overarching goals and objectives of the RULER approach and assist with implementation school-wide 
• Referral to, and collaboration with, outside providers
• Serve as a resource and advocate for families and the individual needs of their students