Northstar promotes educational excellence and career opportunities for students with disabilities who have academic, physical, or social challenges. Northstar has been serving young people with a wide variety of learning differences since 1996—serving students in grades K-12 at the Academy and providing vocational training for young adults ages 16-24 through the Northstar Career Center.

Essential Responsibilities:

Help students navigate critical situations; to include recognizing and responding to student mental and/or behavioral health crisis and offering short-term intervention, referral and follow up.
Facilitate individual counseling in the form of planned, goal-focused, short-term sessions to assist students in overcoming issues impeding school success.

Consult with professionals inside and outside of the school building to assist in identifying and addressing barriers to student achievement. Make appropriate referrals to community services as needed.
Gather and analyze data to guide annual program planning, inform practice, and evaluate program impact on student achievement, behavior, and attendance.

Collaborate with school personnel to design and implement support services or programs that promote student success.

Support students in identifying abilities, interests, and skills to help them make decisions and develop immediate and long-range educational, career and personal goals.

Possess working knowledge of current graduation requirements and work with students and personnel to communicate student progress towards graduation.

Perform other duties as assigned by the Head of School or Assistant Head.

Core hours are 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM . Staff and data collection meetings are required and may extend beyond 3:30 PM.

Northstar is licensed by the Virginia Department of Education and a fully accredited member of the Virginia Association of Independent Schools. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sexual orientation or national and ethnic origin in the administration of its education policies, admission policies, programs or athletic and other school administered programs.

Required Qualifications

Must possess knowledge of appropriate counseling interventions in a school setting, including facilitative skills, critical incident intervention techniques, threat assessment protocol, and community resources for students and families.
Must have a thorough knowledge of the curriculum, instruction, social-emotional, counseling/guidance theory and practice.
Counseling skills must include problem identification/analysis skills and basic therapy resolution.
Must possess Masters in School Counseling and should be licensed & endorsed in school counseling by VDOE.
Prefer at least 1 year experience with students with disabilities.
Applicants considered for employment must successfully complete the following background investigations/tests: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal History Investigation, State Police Criminal History Investigation, Child Protective Services (CPS) Investigation, Tuberculosis Screening/Test