A counsellor is almost always tied up with a counselling room or a counselling cubicle.
As a counsellor, I believe that the wonders of my craft take place in the confines of a room where the counsellee can fully manifest his or her being and totally express his or her thoughts and feelings without the fear of being judged or mocked.
In my experience, though, as a school counsellor, I discovered that being out of the comforting counselling space and immersing in the students' academic world is equally important and can surface myriads of issues and experiences of and information about the counsellee which may not be accessible in the actual counselling process.
In fact, I am convinced that at the onset of or even before the actual counselling, the school counsellor has to spend significant amount of time in immersing into the student-counsellee's environment--particularly the classroom environment.
As I, the counsellor, immerse in the student's world, I have to take different lenses. At one point, I have to take the lens of a teacher and see the child from the teacher's point of view. On the other, he or she has I have to take the lens of a classmate and seek to understand the child from the point of view of a classmate. At all times, I have to wear the lens of an observer, keenly noting down behaviours as they occur. As I shift the use of these lenses, I must keep my feet on the ground and must not be separated from the reality that although I am wearing diverse lenses, I am still the counsellor and for that reason I am immersing in the student's world--my counsellee's world.
In the process of observing the student in the actual environment he or she lives, I gain more idea about the student's concerns from an objective point of view. Hence, as a school counsellor I prefer observing children unobtrusively (without making the observed aware that he or she is being observed). Sometimes, I find it necessary not to inform teachers who I am supposed to observe so even them can freely approach any student in the most natural way they do.
After the immersion and observation, I make sure to analyze the information I gathered but guard myself from imposing my observations on the student. The pitfall of conducting observations is the possibility of the counsellor having prejudice towards the counsellee. This is the struggle that the observing counsellor has to face. Nonetheless, with enough preparation and genuine openness and concern towards the student, this pitfall can be avoided.
The same way that what takes place within the walls of the counselling room should not leak out, what happenes outside the counselling room must not dictate the counsellor's relationship and process with the counsellee.
At the end of the day, all these efforts are done to help the student become the best he or she can be. If what has been done by the school counsellor does not support this goal then something in the plan has to be checked and evaluated.

