In response to an education landscape that continues to face new and increasingly complex challenges, the Graduate School of Education and Counseling is introducing a new course to its school counseling core curriculum focused entirely on crisis and intervention strategies in K-12 schools. Crisis Counseling, which Lewis & Clark plans to offer this fall, is strategically designed to help future school counselors utilize the theories, techniques, and practical applications to best support students and the broader school community in the wake of crisis.
The new one-credit course is designed to provide graduate students a dedicated space to think through what it looks like to engage with a crisis situation that affects the school community—whether that be an event that occurs inside a K-12 building, like gun violence, or an external event in the area, such as a natural disaster or a fatal accident.
Crisis Counseling will take a trauma-informed approach, addressing all aspects of crisis situations, from prevention to intervention and post-intervention. This course serves as a complement to other teaching on crisis response within the School Counseling program while providing a critical extra layer of focused instruction to meet the moment.
“It was important for us to draw a clear distinction between regular ‘business as usual’ and what we’re dealing with in K-12 schools right now,” says Heather Hadraba, clinical associate professor and program director. “How do you sit with someone who’s in pain? The best thing we can do is immerse our students in the real situations we’re seeing—it’s almost like a learning lab. It’s an exploration of the issues at hand and how to show up with strength.”
Today’s school counselors face a variety of crises on the job. Shootings in K-12 schools reached an all-time high in 2023, with only a small dip in the 2024 data. According to the independent K-12 Shooting Database, there were an alarming 332 incidents on school property in 2024, up from 124 in 2019, the most recent pre-pandemic year. Other issues related to public health, behavioral disruptions, and social media usage continue to be top of mind for counselors, all against the backdrop of increasing financial and operational demands.
Hadraba views crisis counseling as one of the foremost issues in the field, drawing from her extensive experience as a licensed professional school counselor and counselor educator. In 2023, Hadraba was elected to the board of the Oregon School Counselors Association, where she serves as treasurer and a leading voice on matters related to counseling work. She is also board chair of OK YOU, a nonprofit that supports young people through free creative wellness practices.
Hadraba also notes that professional burnout is a major concern for school counselors across the United States, and the demands upon counselors continue to rise. In Oregon, schoolchildren show troubling rates of mental health conditions, exacerbated by the social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state reports some of the highest rates of teen addiction in the nation. And in 2023, Oregon ranked last in a nationwide survey evaluating the balance of mental health needs and effective care.
To help graduate students begin their careers feeling confident and prepared, course faculty will teach primarily through acting out real situations. This is an essential pedagogical tool that students will encounter in all of their classes, empowering them to feel equipped to respond to the range of urgent and unpredictable circumstances that can walk through school doors.
“What does it look like when there’s a crisis happening and you’re working as part of a team of educators and administrators? We pose relevant, timely scenarios to students, who will then embody the role of a school counselor,” says Hadraba. “Even though crisis intervention is a part of all of our training, we want to be explicit about it—naming these situations as ‘crises,’ and making it clear that it’s a priority for us.”
School Counseling
