Counseling (Guidance) Guide
Counselor panel, appointment requests, teacher referrals and confidentiality — the school's guidance service end to end.
1. What Does the Counselor Do?
The counselor (guidance teacher) is the school's psychological counseling and guidance service. Counselor is a separate role in the system; on sign-in they land on their own Counseling Panel.
- Holds one-on-one meetings with students and keeps meeting notes.
- Handles appointment requests from students, parents and teachers.
- Assesses students referred by teachers.
- Provides support on academic, behavioral, family, career and exam-anxiety matters.
A counselor account is created from the Staff section with the “Counselor” role.
2. Appointment Request (Student / Parent / Teacher)
Everyone contacts counseling from their own panel:
Student / Parent
From the “Request a Counseling Appointment” card, sends a request with a topic (academic, exam anxiety…), a preferred date and a short note. Tracks the request status (scheduled/completed) from their own panel.
Teacher
From the “Refer to Counseling” card, refers a student to the counselor; counseling reviews and schedules a meeting.
3. Counseling Panel (Queue)
In the counselor panel they see the Appointment Requests queue. For each request they can:
- SCHEDULE the meeting by picking a date (the requester gets an automatic notification).
- Mark COMPLETED once the meeting is done.
- DECLINE if unavailable (a polite info message is sent).
The “Open” tab shows pending/scheduled requests, “All” shows the history.
4. Meeting Notes
For each meeting the counselor enters the student name, a tag (academic/behavior/family/career/exam anxiety) and a note. These records are confidential and visible only to counseling staff; they help track the student's journey over time.
5. Confidentiality and Authorization
- Meeting notes and requests are SENSITIVE data; only the counselor + school management (canManageRecords) can see them.
- An ordinary teacher cannot see all students' counseling records.
- The person who opened a request sees only THEIR OWN request's status.
- Permissions are enforced in Firestore security rules (not just by hiding the menu).