School for School Counselors Podcast

4 Key Components School Counselors Need for an Amazing School Year

• School for School Counselors • Episode 103

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What if you could transform your school counseling program into a haven of organization and efficiency that instantly puts students- and you- at ease? This week on the School for School Counselors Podcast, I'm sharing the four critical components you must consider in preparing your school counseling program for success in the the new school year.

From the must-have supplies every counselor should keep on hand to smart tips for curating your materials, you'll learn how to create a welcoming yet streamlined environment. Plus, I'll guide you on the key documents and checklists you need at your fingertips to respond efficiently to any situation.

We'll also talk through the often-overlooked world of data systems, the importance of a reliable record-keeping system, and how vital a solid roster tracking system is for comprehensive student support. Finally, we'll touch on the importance of your professional mindset, remaining patient and staying flexible in the face of unexpected challenges or slow-to-change campuses.
 

Mentioned in This Episode:
BEST YEAR EVER!!!
School Counselor Must-Haves Guide
School for School Counselors Mastermind


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Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.

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Speaker 1:

What would it take for you to feel completely ready for the new school year? What would it take for you to feel like I got this, everything's in place, I'm ready to go. Let's rock 2024-2025?. I'm here to tell you, as we're walking through stores, seeing all the back to school items, seeing the lists that are out on the Internet circulating and the posts in social media, there's a lot of chatter already about the new school year, about minimalist offices, about how sometimes more isn't always better and how we can really carefully curate our materials so that we're not overwhelmed and so we do not overwhelm our students. Well, this week we're going to talk about the four key things you need to have in place to set yourself up for an absolutely amazing 2024-2025. And if you listen until the end of this episode, I'm going to have something super exciting for you that's going to help get you right where you want to go.

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, I'm Steph Johnson, host of the School for School Counselors podcast, and I'm so glad that you joined me for another episode another week. This is the highlight of my week, for sure sitting down to record a podcast episode for you, imagining your beautiful faces out there listening and hoping that I am able to somehow inspire you or motivate you in your work. My team and I are on a mission to help school counselors create school counseling programs that are impactful but also feel sustainable, because I want you loving going to work every day, every day. Let's talk about these four key components that every school counselor needs to have in place at the start of the school year, and as you listen, you can kind of check the boxes in your mind and anticipate what are some things you might need to be looking at once you're back on contract. So, number one we want to make sure that our physical space is pretty ready to go. That doesn't mean it needs to be perfect, but we need to have things pretty streamlined and ready to go. And, as I mentioned before, in our last episode episode 102, we talked a lot about what the research says about setting up our counseling spaces. So if you haven't listened to that, after we get done with this episode, go back and take a listen to that one too, because I've gotten a lot of really great feedback from school counselors saying you know, I'd kind of been feeling this way, but no one was ever able to validate my suspicions, or I know I should have been doing this all along, but you gave me the kick in the rear to get it going. So go check that out for sure.

Speaker 1:

But you want to make sure you have that physical space set up, where it is organized, it is streamlined and everything in that space has a purpose. One of the things we talked about in that episode were these wonderland school counseling offices with things as far as the eye can see Decorations and games and books and materials and art supplies and all of the things which sometimes can overwhelm our students. So we want to be very careful and mindful of that. We want our physical space to make sense, we want it to be organized. We need to have some blank space in there, my friends, so that we are able to effectively serve our students. To effectively serve our students, in addition to having your physical space pretty much ready to go, we also, of course, need to have our materials ready.

Speaker 1:

Now we have a list of suggestions. If you want some ideas for some new materials, if you're a beginning school counselor and you're not quite sure what you want in your office, we've got a great starting point for you. It's called our School Counselor Must-Haves Guide and you can grab it on our website. Head on over to schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash must-haves and you'll be able to grab that list with our compliments. And the cool thing about that list is it's not something that I just sat and jotted down on the back of an envelope one day, hoping that you were going to take my word for it. We actually crowdsourced all of the information from the members of our School for School Counselors Facebook group, so we asked everyone what are your favorite items in these different categories? And, as our members sounded off, we added them to the guide and we also linked to all the materials, so you don't even have to go search for them. They're right there at your fingertips.

Speaker 1:

Secondly, as part of your materials, you need to have key documents ready to go checklists and protocols. Now, this is something, too, we're going to be talking about a lot in July as we begin to help you prep for the new school year. But any frequently utilized document, such as district-mandated documents, any checklists for procedures, student support team checklists, 504 checklists, perhaps committee checklists, suicide screening protocols all of those things we want to make sure we have at our fingertips. We don't want to be fumbling and bumbling through a bunch of files on our desktop trying to print out the right piece of paper when we're sitting across from a student in crisis, or when we have a busy teacher or parent standing in front of us waiting on it. We want to make sure we have that at our fingertips, and so I think it's always a great idea to have those prepped and stocked and ready to go. And again, we're going to be talking about a great opportunity at the end of this podcast episode where we're going to walk you through, step by step, which documents you want to have in your office, how you want to get those organized and where you want to keep them. So keep listening.

Speaker 1:

And then, third, as part of your materials, you want to make sure you have all of your most necessary supplies on hand and ready to go. So for me, that's going to be my post-it notes 1000%. I'm a post-it note girl. I have post-it notes everywhere, all over the place, all the time, and it helps me so much to keep track of things, to jog my memory and to remind me what's coming next, or perhaps what I just put down to go running to put the fire out right. It helps me remember when I come back without too much more task switching going on in my brain. So I love my post-it notes, I love a certain kind of pen G2s are my faves. I know everybody has their favorite kind of pen.

Speaker 1:

But getting those things ready, not only so that they're available when you need them, but it just gives you a feeling of freshness right. It gives you that feeling of newness and anticipation for your school year, and we need to start the new year with that kind of energy, and so I'm going to encourage you to spoil yourself just a little bit with your materials. Get things that are cute, that are functional, that make you feel like you're going to be productive. That doesn't mean you have to go overboard and buy out the entire Office Depot, but it does mean get the things that you love and you know you're going to use. All right, so we have your physical space ready to go. You have your materials ready to go.

Speaker 1:

The third thing you need to have for a successful school year are good systems. You really need to put some thought into the systems you want in place once the school year begins. As an example, there are lots of different ways that school counselors prefer to get student referrals. Some like getting them through an online form like a Google form or a Microsoft form. Some prefer to get student referrals on paper. They have some sort of a slip of paper that the teachers can fill out by hand and submit to them. Some counselors prefer to get those kinds of notifications through email and they have some pretty specific rules set up with their staff as to what's communicated through email. But because they look at their email inbox about 42 times a day, it's less likely that somebody falls through the cracks. Some school counseling departments have really fancy, nifty electronic check-in systems or student self-referral systems online, and some people prefer to get student referrals face-to-face.

Speaker 1:

None of these are right and none of these are wrong. They all come with their own sets of concerns, and I do think it's something that needs to be talked through because there are some caveats to each one of those. But at the end of the day, the most important part of it is that you have an idea of what you want to do. If you're new to a campus, you're a new school counselor, or perhaps you're just starting over in another building you may not know yet what referral system works best for your campus, and that's okay. You don't have to know right away, and there's no rule that says once you introduce a referral system to your staff, that you're doomed to have to put up with it the rest of the school year. There's no law about that. Nine times out of ten you're going to be allowed to change. So don't sweat the small stuff. Just pick one system, try it out and see if it works for you.

Speaker 1:

Another kind of system you might want to think about is a system for data collection. You and I know school counselors are called upon to supply tons and tons of data, and I think it's a good thing. I think it helps us see where our time is going, where our efforts are going and if our intentionality is matching our output right. Are we getting a return out of our time investment, out of our effort on campus? For the amount of time we're putting in to situations? It's really important to have a read on those and, as we know and everybody reminds us all the time we need some data for advocacy purposes as well.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is kind of a touchy subject and I don't want to get too far into it because it's not really the topic of this episode, but the data conversation, I do believe, has been skewed a bit. I do believe it's been weaponized a little bit in our schools, and so I don't think that this is something where you have to aspire to collect data on every single aspect of your program, every hour, every minute of every day, every initiative, every piece of outcome data, every piece of data on your campus as a whole. I don't think that's what you need, but I do think that you need to have a good plan in mind for collecting some use of time data. That's most often where school counselors are challenged. We had a situation just this past month in our mastermind where one of our members was kind of taken aback by some changes that were going to be made for the next school year, and they were able to not have to cower in fear, not have to worry about losing their job or not being able to speak up for themselves, but instead they were able to stand in their truth, they were able to advocate from a position of strength because they had the right information and they were the only one in their district that was able to do that Really, really powerful stuff. So we want to make sure that we have good data systems. If you're not sure what those are, or perhaps you've tried to capture use of time data before and didn't feel successful with that.

Speaker 1:

I want you to know we run a data cohort inside of our School for School Counselors Mastermind. All school year long we start out the cohort inside of our School for School Counselors Mastermind all school year long. We start out the year setting up our systems, creating frameworks for your success, and then throughout the semester we're consistently checking in. We want to know how is it going, where are the blips and the burps? What do we need to fix? How do we keep your methods sustainable but not overwhelm you at the same time? There's a huge data cohort inside of our mastermind and we love talking about that stuff. So if you need some help with that, please know it is available.

Speaker 1:

You also need a good record-keeping system with appropriate documentation and again, I feel like I keep teasing you, but I want you to know I'm going to give all the information at once. At the end of this podcast episode I'm going to tell you about a great opportunity we have for you, where we're going to walk through record keeping at length the ins and outs of what records you keep, what you don't, what are notes? Where do these things stay? How do you keep yourself from becoming liable in certain contentious situations? We're going to talk through all that, and more so if you're not comfortable with your record keeping systems just yet. Keep listening.

Speaker 1:

And then, lastly, you need a good roster tracking system. This is something that hardly anybody talks about. How do you keep up with the students who are currently active within your caseload, the ones that you're seeing consistently or pretty consistently for counseling? How do you ensure that you're circling back to check in with them? How do you make sure that nobody gets lost in the shuffle, as things get kind of crazy and busy throughout the school year? You need to have a good system in place for tracking that student roster. Is it going to be on paper? Is it going to be your use of time documentation to help jog your memory, all different ways those can be set up. And again, we're going to be your use of time documentation to help jog your memory, all different ways those can be set up. And again, we're going to be talking about those at length, coming up here very, very soon. But just keep that in mind. Again, it doesn't mean that you have to decide on your system. It just means you need to have a good idea of how you want to get started. What do you want to try out first, and then you can adjust and compensate from there. All right, so we've talked about having your physical space set up for the beginning of the school year, having your materials ready to go and having some good systems, or at least an idea about good systems, in place.

Speaker 1:

The last thing that you need to have to feel like you're set up for success in the new school year is your mindset, and I know that sounds kind of disappointing in a way. Right, nobody likes to talk about mindset. It feels like this kind of, you know, superfluous idea, and often as counselors we think, man, my mindset's great, that's my work, that's my job. Don't talk to me about mindset. Talk to me about the tactical things. That's where I need help. But I'm here to tell you right now that the difficulties that I've seen a large majority of school counselors have throughout their school years are often in large proportion due to their mindset.

Speaker 1:

Now, I'm not victim blaming here. I'm not saying if things don't go the way you want it to go, that it's your fault. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I do think that a lot of us come into school counseling programs and sometimes even a new school year after we've been doing this for a while with a very militant outlook on what our jobs should be. And part of that comes from the way we're trained. We're trained to be ASCA-aligned school counselors. We are trained to want to build comprehensive school counseling programs, and when we get on campuses and we aren't able to do that, it's really, really hard to let go of the idea and we take it very personally. We start to feel like, if we cannot build the kind of programs we were taught to build, that somehow that's a reflection on us personally and somehow that's a shortcoming or a failure on our part. And sometimes we get really militant, even more so than when we started, because we so desperately know that comprehensive school counseling programs are going to elicit changes for students.

Speaker 1:

I think it's important to keep in mind that typically it takes years to develop the kind of clout on campus that it takes to make a big change. In my opinion, one to two years at minimum, typically three for your administration and the upper ranks of your campus hierarchy to decide that they know you, that they like you and that they trust you. So if it doesn't happen right away, don't panic. That's not always a condemnation of you. It's just a reflection of the things that are going on on your campus. It could be funding, it could be staffing, it could be them just wanting to get to know you better. There can be a lot of things going on there. So don't cling so tightly to your dream that it begins to create animosity. Be patient. That doesn't mean that you don't engage in some micro-advocacy along the way, but you also need to be ready to be flexible.

Speaker 1:

I think, too, a lot of us tend to walk into the new school year with these grand plans, these designs for awesomeness in the new school year and we show up and inevitably somebody says oh, we forgot to tell you You're going to be in charge of that now. Oh, didn't we tell you in your interview? You're responsible for that. And you think well, I mean, I don't even know why I'm here, I'm doing all these committees and all these other things and I can't utilize any of the plans that I made. And then we tend to get really frustrated and disappointed and maybe even disenchanted. So again, I'm not telling you not to look forward, not to have goals, not to create some very loose plans toward where you want to go. But until you know that that is definitely the direction you're going to be allowed to travel, you want to keep them a little loose and then, as you get the permission or the encouragement to move ahead on those plans, you can start to tighten them up.

Speaker 1:

I just don't want to see you make yourself miserable or begin to feel resentful because you can't embark on what you want to do Very, very important. It sounds like I'm being very dramatic, but I can tell you that the majority of issues that I see with counselors at the beginning of the school year typically from about August through November if they're having problems on their campus, particularly with their administration, a large part of it is typically due to mindset. So we just want to be careful about how we're thinking about our work. In the next episode of the podcast, we're going to be talking about how you can harness the right outlook to make that possible, because I know you may be listening to me now going what in the world, how can I even do that? If they're not letting me do the job I signed up to do, why should I be happy about that. We're going to help you plug in those gaps in the next episode.

Speaker 1:

All right, so the four things you need to have to set yourself up for success in the new school year First, your physical space. Second, your materials, your must-haves, your documents, checklists, protocols and office supplies. Third, you need some good systems in place Systems for referrals, for data, for record keeping and for tracking your roster. And then, last, you need to have an amazing patient micro-advocacy mindset. These four things are going to take you so far and they sound so simple that they almost seem silly, but I promise you, if you will give some thought to these, your school year is going to start off on a fantastic note.

Speaker 1:

All right, so the thing that I've been hinting at throughout this podcast episode y'all, I am so excited to tell you that we are bringing back our biggest, best, most well-attended event with, hands down, the most accolades of anything we have ever done in our School for School Counselors world, and it is coming your way July 23rd through the 26th. It is called Best Year Ever and we are going to walk through all of the components to set you up for success in the school year, beyond even what we've talked about in this podcast episode, we are going to get all of your basics under control and laid out for the beginning of the school year. We are going to kill a few sacred cows, a few things that you were probably taught to do in grad school that really you don't want to be doing in your school counseling program. We've got lots of surprises for you, lots of incentives and special gifts, and we want you to be a part of it, because the best thing about Best Year Ever is it is 100% free to you. It is 100% free to you In addition to our School for School Counselors planner, this is our back to school gift to you.

Speaker 1:

We want you to know, without a doubt, that my team and I here at School for School Counselors has your back 1000% and that we desperately want to see you have your best year ever. So if you want more information about that, hop on over to the website schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash best year ever. You can see all the information, you can get signed up, lickety split and then, once you get signed up, we'll send you some reminders and emails so that you don't miss a thing. So head on over schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash best year ever, and I will tell you, even if you're not a beginning counselor, even if you've been doing this for some time, there's going to be some great information and some great reminders for you in best year ever as well. As a matter of fact, last year we received this testimonial from one of our members. They said this was my second best year ever and I loved it.

Speaker 1:

Going on year 16,. It's so nice to have a high quality professional development opportunity just for counselors. Steph is so knowledgeable, down to earth and accessible. That means the world to me. So y'all, it's not just our newbie counselors we're calling toward best year ever, it's everyone. I want everybody to join me July 23rd and I promise you we are going to have one heck of a time getting ready for your best year ever.

Speaker 1:

All right, thanks so much for joining me for this episode and I hope it gave you some direction in your thoughts for the next school year. As I mentioned, we often think about specific things. We get in this train of thought where we're thinking about certain games or certain activities or certain things we want to download, when really I think we might need to be thinking with a little bit more of a global perspective, our physical space, materials, systems and mindset. If we have those locked and loaded, the rest of the school year is going to be a piece of cake. All right, I'll be back soon.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. We've got some more surprises coming your way this summer, so you're going to want to make sure you hit subscribe in your podcast player so you don't miss any of our big announcements. You're going to be the first ones to hear about all the amazing things happening this summer and I promise you nobody else out there is doing what we have planned for you. It's going to be amazing. So hit subscribe in your podcast player and I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, I hope you have the best week. Take care.