Dr. Ellen Porter Honnet is a counseling and consulting psychologist with expertise in cross-cultural issues and adolescent sexuality. Recently a Psychology Fellow at Wellesley College Counseling Center and Harvard University Health Services, she was for several years Dean for Co-education at Harvard College. Dr. Porter Honnet is the Institute Director at the Stanley H. King Counseling Institute. The Stanley H. King Counseling Institute offers a model of teaching counseling and listening skills to teachers, advisors, administrators, and other school personnel. The goal of the institute is not to train professional counselors, but to help teachers strengthen and deepen their relationships with students.

What would you do if?

• Megan’s grades have been going downhill, and she seems less and less engaged.
• You overhear talking about how many boys Jill has had oral sex with this year.
• Bill is rumored to be drinking every weekend.
• You see geometrical scratches on Kelley’s arm.
• You find out that Kevin’s father has cancer.
• Stacy asks to change her lab partner to “someone who speaks English.”
• Nita asks you to change her grade because her parents will flip over a C.
• Jeremy confides he’s in love with his roommate.
• Jessica breaks down in tears and asks to leave class.
• Sean wants to leave school and go to one “where there are people like me.”
• Lisa tells you that someone wrote “we all hate you” on her Facebook “honesty box.”

We welcome Dr. Porter Honnet to the Jeff Wolfsberg Show today.

Counseling On-the-Run with Dr. Ellen Porter-Honnet Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Wellness Tip

What is wellness?

Wellness includes the following things and therefore wellness education is happening whenever and wherever any of these things take place within the community:

• A sense of well-being, happiness, joy
• Resilience
• Self-esteem and self-confidence
• Ability to care for self and others
• The development of effective problem-solving and decision-making skills, personal responsibility
• Physical health, and an understanding of the body and its care
• Values identification and clarification
• Conflict management and resolution
• Safety
• Relaxation and stress management

The above list is an abbreviated reckoning of wellness and it should be expanded upon liberally and when necessary. A definition of wellness should never be fixed, then, for wellness itself is fluid and adaptive; it should reflect the specific needs of the individual and the community.

Tagged as: advisory, Advisory systems, counseling, counselor, secondary school advisory