School for School Counselors Podcast

[Bonus Ep.] Unlock the Secrets to Sustainable School Counseling

August 30, 2024 • School for School Counselors • Episode 113

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In this episode of the School for School Counselors Podcast, host Steph Johnson discusses ways to make school counseling more sustainable and enjoyable. Steph explores the importance of understanding your 'why', the benefits of tracking your time, the necessity of delegation, the value of effective systems, and the role of building strong relationships with staff. She emphasizes the need to maintain realistic expectations and provides insights on how school counselors can manage their demanding roles without burning out. Join the conversation and learn practical tips to thrive in your school counseling career.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:28 The Importance of Sustainable School Counseling

04:34 Understanding Your 'Why'

08:13 The Role of Data in School Counseling

14:20 The Power of Delegation

16:44 Building Effective Systems

18:45 Fostering Relationships with Staff

20:55 Setting Realistic Expectations

22:38 Conclusion and Support Resources

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Mentioned in This Episode:

SMART School Counseling Assessment: smartschoolcounseling.com

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:

Hey there, school counselor, welcome back to the second episode of our podcast power pack commemorating School for School Counselors podcast success throughout the last two years. So excited for you to join me. I'm Steph Johnson, a full-time school counselor, just like you, on a mission to make school counseling more sustainable and more enjoyable, and I just can't tell you how excited I am that you've joined me on this ride. Coincidentally, the topic for this episode is about making school counseling sustainable. You know, in the last episode we talked about our SMART framework and our SMART school counseling assessment. Go back and find the information on that. Smartschoolcounselingcom is where you can find that assessment. Go back and find the information on that. Smartschoolcounselingcom is where you can find that assessment. But we constantly in our world, are talking about how do we make information more accessible, more meaningful, how do we make school counselors experts in their craft, how do we join in real life with real world school counselors and real problems, and so everything that we put out in the world is designed with that end in mind. So we talk about sustainable school counseling a lot. It reminds me of when I was a kid.

Speaker 1:

I used to watch a bunch of Looney Tunes cartoons I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember Looney Tunes cartoons, but there were several where the roadrunner would be running away from Wile E Coyote. He'd be chasing and inevitably they would come to the edge of a cliff and the roadrunner would run right off the cliff and get wherever he needed to go, but the coyote would take a few steps up into thin air, look down and all of a sudden realize there was no ground underneath his feet and you could see him scrambling, trying to run his way up the air right to save himself from falling to the ground below. And I think often, as school counselors, that's how we feel. Sometimes we feel like the earth just moves out from underneath us and we've been given all these expectations, all of these initiatives that we're supposed to be meeting, all these responsibilities to meet, but then there's no foundation underneath us and we feel like we just were falling and falling, and falling. So we want to help school counselors with that. We want to give you a little bit of an extra boost. We want to give you some encouragement and motivation to get through this crazy job, because it's an incredible thing in and of itself that you're here doing this. If you think about it, it's really pretty phenomenal that you said, hey, I want to raise my hand, I want to do that job, I want to see and hear the worst that my students have to offer. I want the emotional burden to carry some of that information in my mind and in my heart because I can't share it with anybody else on my campus. I want to be in the middle of some situations that feel unsolvable. Yeah, I'll do that, sign me up for that, because I love students so much, I want to support kids so much, that I'm willing to do that. That's pretty incredible when you think about it, isn't it? And I think it's a testament to your character. I think it is a testament to your morals and your values that you still feel like that's an important thing in this world, and I 1000% agree with you. So if you're continuing to show up, if you're continuing to give and learn and grow and provide care and empathy and support and understanding to students, I think we should be working as an industry to help your work feel more sustainable. Be working as an industry to help your work feel more sustainable.

Speaker 1:

In an era where school counselors are being second-guessed, we're being misutilized or we're just plain misunderstood. How do we find that secret sauce to keep us going? How do we maintain our motivation and our desire to walk through those doors every morning and greet students like it's the first day? How do we do that? I think there are some secrets to sustainable school counseling and I want to share them with you in this podcast episode. I want to get the wheels turning in your mind so that when you're having those rough patches or perhaps preemptively right to be able to really set yourself up for success, let's think about these aspects of sustainable school counseling.

Speaker 1:

First and this is a little cliche, it almost feels cringeworthy, but I think it's an important conversation to have. So I'm just going to offer it out there and do with it what you will. But this is a conversation we also had in our mastermind earlier today, before I recorded this episode about knowing your why. And again, this is so cliche, it gets twisted in so many ways. I don't mean sit down and write mission statements and vision statements and all of those kinds of things. I don't think those are exceptionally helpful to you in your work, but I do think it is helpful to have a clear philosophy of why you do this work.

Speaker 1:

I think so often in our work we're told it's for the kids, just do it for the kids. Or we feel like people are leaning on us to do things out of the goodness of our hearts and sometimes we want to do those things. Sometimes we understand and we get it and that's what we want to do. But sometimes we don't and we don't want to be goaded into this idea of you know well, just overwhelm yourself, just do too much. Check every box, dot every I. Overwhelm yourself, just do too much. Check every box, dot every I and cross every T we give you because it's for the good of the kids. We know that's not healthy, right? We need good boundaries, we need good distinctions between us as a human being and us as a school counselor. Our work life versus our home life, all of those different things, our work life versus our home life, all of those different things. But in the middle of that we need to not lose sight of our why. Why are we in school counseling? What brought us here? What is the purpose? And that helps us maintain that clarity and that clear direction.

Speaker 1:

I have worked with probably now 500 aspiring school counselors in preparing for job interviews and getting ready to get hired on a school campus, and every single time that I meet with one of these folks, I ask them what brought you to school counseling? And nine times out of 10, it's a story that will just inspire you forever or it will absolutely break your heart. But almost every single person that I've worked with has a reason. There is something that drove their decision to get into school counseling. I don't think anybody just wakes up one day and says I think I'll just become a school counselor. That seems easy. I'll do that. If they do, they don't last very long, do they? So you need to have that idea in your mind. It's going to help you get through the hard days. It's going to help you get through the days when kids come and tell you stories that you could have never imagined and that you wish you had never heard. It's going to help you march through situations when you desperately wish you had someone on campus that you could go consult with or just unload on for a minute and nobody's available. It's going to help you get your muster and your courage up to walk back through the door on a day that follows a day that everything just went wrong.

Speaker 1:

You need to have a clear picture of your why. What brought you into school counseling? What do you derive personally from your school counseling pursuits? And keep that in the forefront of your mind, because it really does serve to carry you through some really difficult times. Sit for a minute and think about your why. Secondly and this is going to feel really counterintuitive to a lot of you but to make school counseling sustainable, sometimes we have to go the extra mile in capturing our program data. That sounds weird. You're like Steph. You just told me we want to make school counseling more sustainable, yet here you are telling me to do more work in an already overloaded schedule. Are telling me to do more work in an already overloaded schedule. Let me tell you why I'm saying that, because I think the reason will surprise you.

Speaker 1:

School counseling data, for better or for worse, has become a really hot topic in our industry lately, and I think it's great that people are more aware of it. I think it's cool that school counselors are paying attention to the things that they're doing, but I think the reasons behind it are being manipulated somewhat and that's troubling to me. But the inevitable fallout right of just data-driven initiatives of any kind. I think that use of time data is meant for more than just advocacy, and usually when we hear people talking about school counseling data, that's what they're talking about. They're talking about using data to either prove what you've been doing all day long or to prove that what you're doing is working, and I do think those are two important pieces to the puzzle, but I don't think they're the whole story, and I think that's why a lot of people fall short in their data collection initiatives because they don't have the right frame of mind on what they're doing.

Speaker 1:

If you feel like the only reason that you're capturing data is to justify your job, you're going to get tired. It's going to burn you out. You're going to feel like it's going to burn you out. You're going to feel like why am I doing this? I shouldn't have to do this. I saw a lengthy thread in social media just this morning talking about that thing. Why should I have to justify my use of time? Nobody else on my campus has to do it. Why is it just me? I think that's insulting. I don't think that's fair. On and on, and on and on. And some of those folks have a point. But if we're only looking at data for those compliance reasons, we're missing the boat, because that's not the whole story.

Speaker 1:

Your data is going to help you triage and prioritize the needs on your campus. You are going to have days where you feel like there is not any way I can get to the next thing. There's too much. I can't add one single thing to my plate today. And in those times you're going to need to be able to effectively triage and prioritize your activities. And that doesn't always mean in the moment. Sometimes, if you have a broader scope of what's going on, it helps you to shuffle things around a little bit more.

Speaker 1:

If you have a student that comes to you and says oh, ms So-and-so, I have to see you right now. I'm having a crisis and everything's wrong and I hate my life and I really need to talk to you and you know that you've spent 5% of your time in the last month with this one specific student it's going to help you triage. Was it immediate concerns? Was it crisis concerns? Do you need to jump on it right now or do they tend to be something different? Can you identify a theme? When they come see you, can they wait just a second? It doesn't mean you're putting them off.

Speaker 1:

But inevitably in our work we have to triage, and so we've got to have that information. We've got to know what's going on. It's also going to help you prioritize your initiatives. If you get a great new idea, or if your administrator has a great new idea for you, you're going to be able to prioritize things in your schedule. You're going to know where your time is going, and sometimes nothing for nothing y'all. You're going to be able to find places that you're wasting time. Believe it or not, email is a big area of wasted time. I do think you need some downtime to sit and just process, and I think that all school counselors should be scheduling white space in their day.

Speaker 1:

It's a whole other conversation, but if you're looking for pockets of time, your use of time data is going to help you do that. Working with use of time data is going to help you conceptualize your role on your campus a little bit better. It's going to give you a better understanding of the expectations for you, particularly if you're just getting started on a campus and you're tracking what you're doing out of the expected roles that have been given to you. It's going to just be able to give you a fuller, more rich picture of what the true expectation on that campus is for the school counselor. It's going to help you triage needs, it's going to help you prioritize initiatives and it's just going to give you a more well-rounded education on not only the way your campus works and what its needs are, but how you fit into that puzzle. And so I really want to encourage you if you're not capturing use of time now, consider it, because I think it could be super valuable to you and it may come into play later on as part of justifying your role.

Speaker 1:

We had a couple of members of our School for School Counselors mastermind just this last year who were keeping use of time data, thinking nothing was going to come of it, and all of a sudden at the end of the year, they got an unexpected curveball and that data was helpful in those conversations to be able to justify why they needed to remain where they were. So keep all this in mind. It's not wasted time, it's not an extra responsibility. This should be fundamental to your school counseling program, and although it may feel like extra work at the outset or until you get your systems and habits in place, it's going to pay off in spades. It's going to be so worth it and it will make your school counseling program feel more sustainable. So we have your why and we have your time tracking coming.

Speaker 1:

The third thing that we've got to do to make school counseling more sustainable is learn how to delegate. We are often the ones that want to jump in and fix everything right. We just want to make it better, we just want to help, we just want to give and give and give. And sometimes we have to remember, like we always say in School for School Counselors, that we're helpers, we're not fixers, and not every time needs to be us. It doesn't always have to be us running to the rescue.

Speaker 1:

We can delegate things to other people on our campus, delegate some of those responsibilities. Is there someone else that can help with behavior intervention in classrooms in the moment, and then you come back around at the end to kind of bring it all home, have the conversations, make the plans, identify the coping strategies, without having to actually be there in the moment. It's possible, something to look at. Can you delegate some of your other responsibilities? If you have helpers on your campuses Social, emotional coaches, community organization workers, psychologists, those kinds of folks what can you collaborate on what can you double team on? What can they take off of your plate? It's interesting to think about, because sometimes there's more there than you would initially suspect.

Speaker 1:

So think about delegating those things and think about how, when you don't delegate responsibilities, it kind of serves to undermine your role in a way, because if you're constantly running to the rescue and you're always available, what are people going to assume about you? They're going to assume that you need something to do, and that is not the impression that we want to give the folks that we work with every day, certainly not the impression that we want to give our administrators. And so we've got to be careful, even if that impression is not accurate. Even if you had to drop a hundred things to go running to the rescue, if you don't have to, you just might be mindful of the times and places in which you're intervening. Again, I'm not telling you to halfway do your job, I'm not telling you to shirk your responsibilities, but I am saying be mindful of how you intervene and in what contexts, so that you can just kind of be a little bit healthier in your response, right? Because again, if we're the go-to for everybody all the time, it's going to burn us out eventually. That's a heavy load to carry.

Speaker 1:

Next, I would say look at your systems. Are your systems manageable and are they sustainable? This past summer, in our Best Year Ever free event, we talked through the concept of a jump file having everything at your fingertips so you can just grab and go when things are needed. That's an exceptionally helpful collection of items to have in your office so that you don't have a student in crisis and you're trying to find the protocol or you need a parent signature but you got to pull the paper up real quick on your computer or whatever it is. Have those things ready to go. We have a formalized list of those for you. And then, what other systems do you have going on on your campus? Is your time capture system efficient? Is it working for your needs? There's lots of different ways you can set those up. So is the way that you're doing it working for you? If not, change it, make it sustainable. These are the things we talk about in consultation in our School for School Counselors Mastermind all of the time Helping people reframe, re-identify their priorities.

Speaker 1:

How do they set them up, how do they sustain them? How can we help them do that? It's a large part of the work we do over there. Do you have the right templates? Do you have the right checklists? Do you have all the right materials in place? Are your referral systems appropriate for the way your campus operates, despite what social media would have you believe there's no one right answer to that question? How do you tweak it and refine it? You've got to find your sustainable systems. Often, identifying those systems comes through consultation, because you're going to need to hear what other people are doing and kind of fit those pieces together to figure out how you want to do it. So we've talked about having your clear philosophy and knowing your why. We've talked about keeping track of your time. We've talked about delegating some of your responsibilities. We've talked about looking at your systems to be sure they're manageable and they're sustainable.

Speaker 1:

Fifth, I would say we need to build relationships and understanding among our staff. This one, I think, is overlooked a lot. I think on the surface, we think, yeah, I mean, that makes sense, I should have good relationships with the people I work with. But really, how often do we implement it? Because the school counselors that I've talked to are typically focused on their interventions with students and the adults around them are kind of a second thought, right, or they just assume they're building these connections with teachers because they're saying, hi, good morning, how are you? But they're not investing the time to intentionally get to know these folks. And that's a big hurdle for us because, again, we're time-limited, right, we have lots of responsibilities, but if we can be intentional about building these relationships with people on our staff, it's only going to help us. It helps you build bridges, it helps you find your allies on campus who are going to support you and who are going to be your voice for you when you're not around. It's going to help you make new allies as well, and it's going to serve as a reflection of you and the way you work.

Speaker 1:

People assume that the way you are one-to-one is also the way you do your job, and so if you are able to have conversations with staff members that are mindful, that are full of empathy, that contain a lot of active listening, people are going to understand how you work and they're going to be more likely to be a champion of your cause, not to mention just maybe becoming some really good friends on campus, right, and making you feel like you're not quite so by yourself. So investing time intentionally into developing these relationships, not just hoping they just kind of happen or they just fall into place. Give it some time and intentionality. Create opportunities to be able to start conversations with people, to follow up with them and ask about how things went, because I promise you it's going to be so worth your time.

Speaker 1:

Last, I think we have to make sure we have realistic expectations of our work, and I talked about this in our previous episode when we were talking about the SMART school counseling framework, so I'm not going to belabor it a ton, but I do want to just remind you that the framework and the ideals that you've been given by your national organization or perhaps your state organization, they're aspirational right, they're the perfect world situation, and while it would be great to get there I would love for each and every one of you to be there that's not often reality for the majority of school counselors, so you need to be careful and you need to filter information through some sort of a sieve in your mind about what's realistic and what's not, and remember that the shortfalls of your program aren't necessarily your personal shortcomings. I think that's an important distinction to keep in mind, and far too many school counselors are burning out because they feel frustrated about not being able to attain this ideal, or they feel angry because they're not given the resources or the time or the autonomy to meet the ideal. And they know they can do it, they've been trained in it and they know how awesome it's going to be for that school campus once they get ideal. And they know they can do it, they've been trained in it and they know how awesome it's gonna be for that school campus once they get there. But they just can't quite make it. And so, from A to Z, somewhere in the middle, they give up. They throw their hands up and they say this isn't worth it, it's never gonna be what it's supposed to be. And I give up and think about all of the students that we're letting down when we do that. That's something to consider for sure.

Speaker 1:

All right, so making school counseling sustainable. I think if we listen to all of the influencers, school counselors online, if we are just looking at these aspirational goals, we're going to burn out, we're going to feel like we're not enough. We're going to feel like we're never going to hit're gonna feel like we're never gonna hit the mark, and that's not where I want you. I want you taking control of your school counseling career and your program to make it feel sustainable, to feel like you have your thumb on the things you need to be doing and that it's gonna be okay, and we wanna support you in getting there. Remember, we have our School for School Counselors Mastermind available. If you need some additional professional support and consultation, we got you. We hold weekly support and consultation chats, monthly masterclasses, monthly 15-minute challenges that are going to majorly move the needle for your program, as well as monthly data discussion cohorts where we start talking about school counseling data, not only use of time, but program-wide initiative-related data. It's just a tremendous community with so much going on and we would love for you to be a part of it. Schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash mastermind All right.

Speaker 1:

So I hope you enjoyed this perspective on making school counseling sustainable. It reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit You're good enough, you're smart enough and doggone it people like you. I'm so glad you're here with me and I look forward to being back soon with the third episode of our podcast, power Pack in Celebration of the School for School Counselors podcast. So keep listening and I'll be back very shortly.