A Critical Review of School Counseling Services in High School During Pandemic COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of counseling services provided by school counselors is limited by situations that require distance learning to be implemented. This also affects the implementation of counseling services which were originally carried out face-to-face and now are required to carry out online. Due to the implementation of distance learning, the delivery of counseling services is hampered. This article presents the results of a review of the definition, impact, implementation, skills of school counselors, implications for school counselors, and the effectiveness of implementing online counseling during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to analyze various articles related to the problems of implementing counseling services during the pandemic at the high school, along with the treatments offered. The method used in this research is Critical Review. The results of the study stated that the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in transforming face-to-face counseling into online counseling, then it also had an impact on information and technology skills used by school counselor. Indeed, the effectiveness of online counseling is no better than face-to-face, but this new strategy can be used as an alternative during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and can continue to be developed with the counselor's skills. So far, the implementation of counseling in schools has been carried out online through various platforms, such as WhatsApp, Google Meet, Zoom Meeting, Discord. In providing counseling services, the school counselor's skill that must be mastered is technology. For this reason, school counselors need to try to improve their mastery of information technology in various ways, such as attending online courses or autodidact.