School for School Counselors Podcast

Forget "Comprehensive" School Counseling

• School for School Counselors • Episode 107

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Welcome back to the School for School Counselors Podcast! In this episode, Steph Johnson dives deep into the often unrealistic expectations placed on school counselors. After wrapping up the wildly successful "Best Year Ever!" event, Steph shares her heart and wisdom from the final night of the extravaganza, emphasizing the need for a strong foundation rather than more tactics.

Too often, school counselors are bombarded with the ideal of achieving a "perfect" or "comprehensive" program, feeling like failures when they can't meet all the earmarks. Steph passionately argues that this perception is unfair and unrealistic, given the diverse and challenging environments counselors work in. She highlights the importance of recognizing the true value of our work and the significant impacts we make, even without all the accolades.

Tune in to hear about the SMART School Counseling Assessment, a unique tool designed to help you assess and appreciate your progress without the pressure of meeting every benchmark. Discover how you can redefine success in your role and find satisfaction and pride in your daily efforts.

Whether you're struggling with limited resources, lack of administrative support, or just the sheer volume of work, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on how to navigate these challenges and feel empowered in your career. Join us as we celebrate the meaningful contributions you make every day and remind ourselves that success isn't about perfection—it's about making a difference where we are.

Speaker 1:

Hey, hey there. Welcome back to the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, glad to welcome you back after a busy week in the School for School Counselors world. We just wrapped up our four-night extravaganza called Best Year Ever, where we sought to go through all of the essentials for the beginning of the school year, as well as a lot of things that grad school probably didn't teach you. We had a great turnout, hundreds of school counselors joining us for that, a lot of great conversation, a lot of great collaboration and a lot of great support to motivate us through the beginning of the new school year.

Speaker 1:

This week on the podcast, I really kind of wanted to share a piece of Best Year Ever with you. I want you to be able to hear a part of this conversation from the last night of our event for a couple of reasons. Number one I think it's going to be interesting to you to hear where my heart and the heart of my team lies as we strive to serve school counselors. I think you're going to be kind of surprised about some of the ways that we make our decisions and decide what we're going to allow to go out into the world to help our friends and colleagues. Second, I think it's going to be pretty motivational for you. I think you're going to hear a lot of your situation and what I have to say. And third, it's going to give you some different perspectives on your work. You know, from the beginning of this thing and you may have heard me say this before School for School Counselors was never intended to be what it is now. This has all grown so organically throughout the years because we've pivoted and we've recognized the needs of our members and the things that our fellow colleagues are asking for and needing in their work. But this was never set out to be any sort of official organization or some sort of a side hustle. That wasn't it at all. And through the years, as we've worked to serve and serve well, we've just organically grown into the wonderful world that you see now in School for School Counselors, and so I just want to give you the opportunity to hear a little bit about where our hearts lie in the school counseling world, how maybe you can look at your work a little bit differently, and for you to be able to hear some of yourself and your own situation in someone else's words. So I hope you enjoy. I hope you get as much out of this as our Best Year Ever. Participants told me that they did Sit back, enjoy, and I truly hope that the Best Year Ever is in store for you too.

Speaker 1:

The last thing you folks need are more tactics or more activities. You can find those anywhere. What you really need is a great solid foundation. Right, you can build anything on top of a solid foundation, but if your foundation is shaky, it's feeling unsure. It doesn't matter what you put on top of it. It's never going to feel solid, and so that's our goal in School. For School Counselors, we don't create lessons, we don't create curriculums. We don't do any of that because, number one, we know that's not our zone of genius, but, number two, those things don't matter if you don't have that solid foundation. I just kind of want to share some thoughts with you, then, about school counseling and where we are in our school counseling world right now. I've shared a little bit about this with you previously, but you know we're kind of in. We're really in a state of flux, right now.

Speaker 1:

We're in a state of flux about what our jobs really need to look like on campuses, what we want our jobs to look like on campuses, and what administrators are being taught or not taught about what our jobs should look like on campuses. Right, and those are often three very different things. So it gets tricky when we're in grad school, or even you know just when we are learning and growing as professionals. We are presented with this idea of the comprehensive school counseling program and all of the components that go into that, and if you achieve that level of having that comprehensive program, then you feel like you've arrived right. You feel like you have, you've nailed it as a school counselor, and that's wonderful. The only problem is sometimes we get put on campuses where the environment is not conducive to building that kind of program. The understanding and the realization of what we bring to a school environment hasn't been reached yet, and so you have situations where perhaps you are being micromanaged to death. Your schedule is being looked at minute by minute, you're not trusted with your own time, people are suspicious of what you do all day. They don't understand what your work is, or perhaps there's not enough money to fund the kinds of materials you know you really need in your program. You don't have the kind of support. You're running a caseload that is exorbitant. Right Last year, personally, I ran a caseload of 860 by myself, and so I know what that feels like. I know how overwhelming that is and the days when you feel like there's just no way I'm ever going to catch up. There's just no way that I can do it all.

Speaker 1:

And then we get into the spring and we start seeing announcements of schools that have attained ramp status or we see schools that have attained some sort of state level distinction. And we've been working our tails off. We've been working our guts out every day, we've been pouring our hearts out into our campuses and we look at things like that and we say that's never going to be me. I don't know if you've ever felt that, but looking at those and going that is never going to be me, I'm never going to make it. And the part that really stinks about it is that you know you have what it takes to get there. You have the expertise, you have the knowledge, you have the desire to be able to build a program to that status. If, ding-dang, somebody just wouldn't give you a chance and it's frustrating. And it's not just frustrating for you and you know it's not about you know the recognition so much really as it is about what are my students missing out on? What are my families not getting Because we can't put the right things in place to build these comprehensive programs. Ever been there? Tell me in the chat if you've ever felt any of that, if you've ever experienced that feeling of it doesn't matter how good I, because they're never going to let me go where I want to go have you ever been there?

Speaker 1:

I see lots of chats coming in right now 100%, true, especially ramp, absolutely yeah, yeah. And it feels demoralizing in a way. But it also, quite frankly, to me felt like a bait and switch, because when I was in grad school learning how to build these programs and I really felt like I've got to learn this, I've got to be my best so I can get in and build those programs, and then jumped on a campus and realized that's not the norm. That's not the norm. If you look at the amount of schools who are able to achieve ramp status and compare it to the number of public schools in the United States in general, you're going to see that that ramp percentage is minuscule. It's minuscule and it's not because we don't have great school counselors in our field. It's because we're not working in the right conditions. Right, and I promise I'm getting to a point here and I'm not dogging on ramp. I think it's great. I think trying to attain a comprehensive status is fantastic. We need that goal to shoot toward. We need to be able to do that. But right now we're being asked to run this marathon since I was talking to marathons earlier, we're being asked to complete this marathon with both hands and one foot tied behind our back, and they're asking us to hop to the finish line right. Meanwhile, we have these select few elite athletes that are just zooming on ahead of us because their situation is right for them to be able to succeed.

Speaker 1:

So then the question for us became what do you do then? What do you do when you're working in a program? You're looking at this finish line and feeling like you're never going to get there, and in the marathon running world, we have an expression called hitting the wall. Do you know what it is to hit the wall? It's about mile 20 or 21. And you really feel like you cannot take another step. You honestly just can't even fathom putting one more foot in front of the other, and that's when a lot of people drop out of the race. You start to slow down, people start streaming past you and you think I'm never going to catch up. I might as well just quit.

Speaker 1:

When we're running this race, sometimes that happens to a lot of our good people. When we're running this race, sometimes that happens to a lot of our good people no-transcript. How do you bridge that gap? For all the talks this week that I've done about bridging the gap, how do you bridge that gap? How do you change funding circumstances in states you're not even in? How do you change administrator perceptions when you can't influence those people? How do you change all that? What do you do? How do you help school counselors feel like they can go from where they are to the next step and feel successful? And so we've been working a long time on this. We've been thinking about it Honestly, we've been discussing it a lot, we've been praying on it a lot.

Speaker 1:

How do we guide our friends and colleagues in a way where we can feel like, if we're not going to get to that ultimate be-all, end-all goal, whatever it is that we've set in our mind, we can feel like I've done a great job. Look at all I've accomplished, look at what I can do. How many of you feel like you would love to have that kind of feeling when you walk in the door? I'm doing an amazing job. I know that what I'm doing matters. I know that the things that I am doing have an impact on my campus and that it's going to help get people where they need to go Would be amazing, right, would be amazing. I'm pulling something up for you right now. I want you to see this. So if you see my eyes moving around, that's what I'm doing. I want you to know about this.

Speaker 1:

All right, so I'm going to let you in on a little behind the scenes, okay, and we've really been debating about whether we wanted to show this publicly, not because we're worried about you know what you would think, but we don't want you to take it the wrong way, so I'm going to front load this a little bit, okay, as I'm showing you this. This is what we call our smart school counseling framework. Our smart school counseling framework was designed to help us, to help inform me and my team about how to best help guide school counselors in their journey. All right, and the reason I bring that up is I do not want you, looking at this thinking that this is a checklist for you. We've handed out a lot of checklists this week, a lot of actionable items, a lot of to-dos. This is not that, so take this with a grain of salt, but I kind of want to show you where our heart is and where our mind is, as we're in consultation and collaboration with school counselors. I want you to understand where we're coming from. All right, so this has not ever been shared publicly before. This is the first time. I'm super nervous about it, but here we go and I'm just sharing it with you in Canva.

Speaker 1:

All right, this is called our SMART school counseling framework. This is the way my team and I look at everything we do in school counseling. Every workshop we prepare, every masterclass, every printable, every initiative, every live event is benchmarked off of these five components. Every live event is benchmarked off of these five components Start, move, assess, relate and thrive. And our goal is to help move school counselors through these five different components, to help you feel like you are running your best race. Feel like you are running your best race Starting is just your baseline basic knowledge and activities, your preliminary data, what you're capturing on your campus. You don't even really have to try to do. What does it mean? Developing a realistic vision, that's what we're talking about right now.

Speaker 1:

Identifying your knowledge gaps. You've done a lot of that this week. Setting good boundaries, that's where we start as we start consultation in our mastermind. That's where we start, and then we move into these other categories of moving, where we're establishing intentional relationships. There's a way to do that so that you can successfully advocate from the inside out. We start moving through basic data collection, getting those habits in place, those cues and triggers that we talked about yesterday, how to manage all the responsibilities that are flying at you all the time and we begin addressing the knowledge gaps. We start putting things into action to address those knowledge gaps, gaps. We start putting things into action to address those knowledge gaps. Then we move into assessing where we're starting to evaluate more of the things going on in our programs to relating where we're building those strong, awesome relationships with our administrators, our community members, our co-workers, and then eventually, eventually, we want to see everyone get to thrive. Where, then, you're teaching others, you are serving in mentorships. You are serving as a mentor, you're advocating successfully for your field and you feel like you have mastery over your craft. That's what smart school counseling means to us.

Speaker 1:

Notice that nowhere in there does it say achieve all the elements of a comprehensive school counseling program. It would be great if you could do that as part of this and I have no doubt you'll get very close. But that's not the objective, because we have to be okay with the fact that there are some factors that are outside of our control and no matter how hard we advocate, no matter how well we build relationships, there may always be that little something right. So how do we bypass that and still have our best career? We don't want to look back in 15 or 20 years and say, dang, you know, it was awesome, except I never got to do that one thing, and that one thing brings everything down. We don't want you to be there, we want you to feel confident and competent through that.

Speaker 1:

One of the best things about the smart school counseling model is that it's very heavy, and you probably saw let me pull it up one more time so you can see. You probably saw that laying across the top of all of these categories is the support and consultation. We put it over the top because we feel like that's the umbrella of everything. You can learn all of the baseline information you want. You can learn all of the nuances of the legalities or the counseling approaches that you want to learn, but it doesn't mean as much when it's not in context with what you're dealing with in the moment. Right, we learn it better when we're in it. It just it sinks in better. We're able to utilize and play and practice and experiment, and so that's that support and consultation piece is the thread that runs throughout everything we do, even in Best Year Ever, you've noticed, we've taken a lot of time to have discussion and questions.

Speaker 1:

We never want this to be a one-sided relationship. A lot of the workshops and things you go to online is somebody just telling you you should there's not a lot of conversation involved, or if it is conversation, it's, you know. Tell me what you think about what I just told you, and that's not what we're here for. We're playing a different game for sure, and the whole reason I'm showing you the smart school counseling framework is number one, to show you there's a lot going on in the background at School for School, counselors that you're not going to see anywhere else. You are going to see a team of people who genuinely have a heart for our field, who genuinely believe in the power of school counselors and what we're going to be able to accomplish once we can clear a few hurdles.

Speaker 1:

The work that we do is unlike anybody else on our campuses. Stress crosses into chronic stress when you don't have the right kind of support and we talked about that yesterday as well and so I just want you to keep that in mind. At the end of the day, to me, the two most important things that you can have going for you are a realistic vision for where you're headed, something that makes you feel confident and competent, like you're going to be able to achieve and allows you to see the kinds of impacts you're making on your campus, and then a solid base for consultation. It does not have to us, but please get that solid base for support and consultation somewhere, somewhere, and, if you can create multi-layers, have a layer on your campus of people you can go to in the moment in the day. Have a bigger circle within your district or your organization. Have an even bigger level if you can, and don't forget your personal support too.

Speaker 1:

It's not all about work, but make sure you have that solid support and consultation to carry you through the people, that you can go ask a question and you don't have to worry that they're going to look at you like why would you even ask that? Right, or I can't. Believe you don't know that we always have that fear in the back of our mind when we're getting ready to ask a question. Right, you know it. You sat in a bunch of workshops where people have said I have a question, this be a dumb question. But how many times have you heard people say that? Because we all have it running in the back of our mind this might be a dumb question. You've got to be able to consult with people, that you don't worry about judgment, because they've never judged you before, and that's an important piece. So I just encourage you go find that for yourself, make that a habit, ingrane it in your work, schedule reminders for yourself, schedule check-ins with people, but get your good, solid community around you.

Speaker 1:

All right, let me check the chat. I see I have 26 new messages in the chat, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything. Lots of people. Thank you for those of you that were agreeing with me. I appreciate that. So glad that resonated with you guys and thank you. Appreciate that. So glad that resonated with you guys, and thank you. If you can tell nothing else, you can see my heart for our work and how much I really truly believe in all of you and the work that you do every day.

Speaker 1:

It's not easy. It's a big ask for somebody to continue walking in the door each day and saying what's the worst you got? I want that. Send that my direction. I want to intervene in that and then, if we can't get any really quick change, I want to get blamed for it too. So sign me up for that. Where do I sign up for that job? That's the one I want. I joke with my principal all the time, you know when we're having a rough day, because you know we like to collaborate a lot together, and sometimes I'll look at her and I'll just go hey, remember you raised your hand and you said, hey, that job looks like fun. I think I'll do that. We all just laugh about it, because you have those days when you go. Not sure what I was thinking when I did that.

Speaker 1:

We serve a unique purpose on our campus. As I said, we bridge the gap between education and emotional health right. We straddle both of those worlds and emotional health right. We straddle both of those worlds and it puts us in a really unique place to serve students and to really build the kinds of relationships that some of them are lacking in their personal worlds, to be able to convince them that they can achieve anything they want to, and to be able to inspire them by showing them examples of that, both in themselves and in the greater world. I mean, what greater job could you have? What greater job could you have?

Speaker 1:

You know, we were laughing the other night as we were waiting for everybody to log on about. You know, what kind of job would you have if you weren't a school counselor? I don't know what mine would be, because I love what I do so much. I love talking to school counselors. I love working with my students at my school. I love geeking out in the research. It's kind of sad when that's your idea of a fun Saturday night let's sit down with a stack of journals and see what we can uncover. But that's my world. I love it and I love sharing it with you.

Speaker 2:

Can I say something, steph, please? So, regarding the mastermind, I know I mentioned to you guys that this wasn't Steph's side hustle. So, and this is how you know, steph is genuine about what she's doing, that she wants to help school counselors. I had just joined Mastermind, okay, um, I had gotten a job as a substitute counselor with the Department of Education and I didn't get any calls. So I was going months without work and I ended up calling somebody. I was like, hey, um, you hired me a while ago, but nothing's come of it. Can you just please find me like somewhere?

Speaker 2:

And they ended up finding me like a place to go, and it was a juvenile hall, but it was a high school, and at that point I didn't have enough high school experience and I was like what am I going to do? Not only high school, but a juvenile hall. I don't know anything about transcripts. And Steph is an elementary school counselor. So she was like here, take my number down. If nobody there is helpful to you, let me know, and within 30 minutes I will have an answer for you, for you, and if it doesn't come from me, I will find somebody who will know the answer for you. And so that is the difference between the mastermind and all the other people are doing. This is genuine, coming from her heart, that she wants to help people, and that's why I think you guys should join the mastermind, because you actually will get help.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. So you have almost made me tear up twice. Now I'm going to have to get you for this, but thank you for that. I do remember we texted quite a bit during that time just going, ok, how do we, how do we make this work? We're going to make this successful, and it was. It was successful. It's one of the great things about having to a good network is you know you can reach out and find the answers when you need it, and that's what. That's what we're striving to build.

Speaker 1:

When we were talking earlier about the smart school counseling framework and about how that kind of guides everything that we do, about the SMART School Counseling Framework and about how that kind of guides everything that we do, it has to pass the SMART Framework litmus test for us to be able to go out into the world we have. We've developed something for you. We've developed a new tool for you that I think is really gonna help, as you're standing in that gap between your reality now and where you want to go, and it's gonna help you kind of put things in perspective a little bit better so that you don't have to look at, let's say, you get a wild hair one day and you're like I'm going to look at ramp again, I feel like I'm in a better place, I think I can do this. And you pull up the ramp criteria and you're looking at all the things listed and you go, no, there's no way, I can't, I can never do that. A total loser, I can't do it. And not to say that you would be, but you know, that's kind of what runs through our minds, right, because I think we hold our work very personally. We have tried to give you a better benchmark on your progress.

Speaker 1:

In our industry, it often feels like all or nothing. You're either ramp or you're not right. You're either comprehensive or you're not. You're either 80-20 or you're not. But when you're working your guts out every day and you're giving it everything you have and you can't meet one of those benchmarks, I don't want you going home thinking this is not for me. I can't do this because we need good school counselors. Our kids need good school counselors. They don't need revolving doors of new people coming in every year or two years. So we need to find some stability in our field, and so this is our answer to it.

Speaker 1:

Let me show you, let me get my screen ready for you and I want to show you what we've developed for you, what could perhaps help you in your journey. So we've developed something that we've called the Smart School Counseling Assessment, and it is online. I'm going to tell you where you can find it in just a minute, but I want to share with you first a little bit about what it does. So it's going to let you assess your own progress in several different categories, and this is a sample of a results page. These are just made-up responses, but you can see it takes eight different categories and it gives you a percentage score through staffing and resources, percentage score through staffing and resources, direct services, stakeholders, program data, funding, program accessibility, personal well-being and professional development and support. And as you answer the questions in this assessment, it's going to score you in all eight of those categories.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you look at something like this and you see, like you know, some of them are in the red zone and some of them are in the green zone, and you feel like man, I've got a lot of categories here that are not green, I must not be doing. Well, we are consistently reiterating through this assessment this is not a judgment of you, this is a judgment on your circumstances and where you stand Two very different things right. This is not a personal score. This in no way reflects how hard you're working, where your heart is that you should be giving more. No, this is where do I stand in real time now, under the basis of my circumstances, with what I've been allotted. What does my program look like now? And the reason that's important is, as we go through the results of this, you're going to see a deeper understanding. It's going to graph it out for you in kind of a really cool way Looks like a spider web and so you can compare all of your categories with a little bit more context.

Speaker 1:

And we say you should not be aiming to get everything in the green. If you're aiming to get everything in the green, your aspirations are high. This is to show us what's our next best step. We're going to be looking in here. What's our next best step? We should probably maybe be looking at these direct services or staffing and resources. Are there anything we can do about that?

Speaker 1:

And when you get done, you have lots of pages behind this that are going to give you ideas for what you can do to improve that score, so that you don't have to feel like, well, I'm not ramped, guess I'm not good enough. Because sometimes, even if it's unintended, that's kind of the insinuation in a lot of school counseling, trainings and workshops and things you go to right. The insinuation is we've all got to achieve the highest level and if we don't, it wasn't worth it. At least that's how I take it. But I'm pretty competitive, so I'm going to say, take that one with a grain of salt. Sorry, I got sidetracked by the comments. Christina, thank you for that. That was so sweet. Shelly, thank you so much. I'm just making sure I'm not missing anything as we're going through all this.

Speaker 1:

This assessment is hopefully going to give you a better baseline on where you stand. When you've developed that support and consultation community and you are able to get some ideas about how to lift some of those scores out of the red and orange, you're going to know your next best step Instead of being overwhelmed by all the things all the time. There are a thousand benchmarks to hit. Which one do I look at first? How do I elevate this program when there's so much that's below standard? Where do I go? How do I do this if they're not giving me money? How do I do this if they're not giving me people? How, if they're not giving me money, how do I do this if they're not giving me people? How do I do this if they're not giving me time? And this is going to break it down in these small little incremental steps to help you do that. Who's on board? Who wants to try the SMART school counseling assessment? Yeah, I'm telling you, we've spent several years putting this together. I will warn you before I tell you it does, margo. It does kind of look like the Enneagram. I will warn you before I tell you it does, margo. It does kind of look like the enneagram. I will warn you that this is still kind of in what we call a beta, which is, um, not fully finalized yet. You might find a few little blips and burps, but the theme of, of the assessment still stands. It's what can you do now, in these tiny steps, to be able to further your program to the next level? And so we want you to be able to try it out.

Speaker 1:

I know once I give you this web address, you're all going to run over there and I'm going to lose you. So, before I do, I want to tell you thank you for being here in Best Year Ever. This is the highlight of my year. I absolutely love it, not only because I get to geek out and talk shop for a whole week, but also because I get to meet so many new and amazing school counselors, and that is the truth. I love getting to know you. Then, when I see your name pop up in other places in our Facebook group or on the email list or something like that, I get excited because I'm like I know them, I remember them, and it just it makes my whole day. I love Besture ever. So thank you for being a part of this with me this year, because it is just my most favorite of all time.

Speaker 1:

If you want to see the assessment, you can go to this web address smartschoolcounselingcom Smartschoolcounselingcom. It will take you straight to the assessment and then your results will be delivered to your email. I would love your feedback on that. If you love it, hate it, you're somewhere in between, I would love it for you to email me and let me know and then go check out the mastermind y'all, because I promise you this is the one thing I believe in with my whole heart that if we can get school counselors in consultation like this, the sky is the absolute limit, absolute limit. I almost cursed when I said that I was so impassioned. I'm glad I caught myself. All right, I'm going to hang out here until everybody is out. Bye-bye, everybody. Have a great weekend.