School for School Counselors Podcast

Four-Tenths of One Percent Means You're NOT Failing

• School for School Counselors • Episode 126

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In this episode of the School for School Counselors podcast, host Steph Johnson discusses the unrealistic expectations set by comprehensive school counseling programs and offers practical advice on how to find peace and redefine success in the field. 

By focusing on what is within their control, embracing small victories, and finding joy in their daily tasks, school counselors can better manage the pressures of their role. 

00:00 Introduction: The Struggles of School Counselors

00:34 Welcome Back: Revisiting a Popular Episode

00:52 The Holiday Pressure and Unrealistic Expectations

04:49 Making Peace with a Non-Comprehensive Program

09:15 The Circle of Control: Focusing on What You Can Change

13:05 The Reality of Comprehensive Programs

19:06 RAMP Status: Putting Things in Perspective

27:16 Final Thoughts


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Speaker 1:

Have you ever felt like you're being asked to perform magic on campus without the tools to make it happen? Like you're expected to create a picture-perfect school counseling program while you're juggling all the things that have nothing to do with counseling? If you feel that way, I can promise you you are not the only one, and in this episode we're going to look at one of the biggest sources of stress that school counselors experience. Hey, my friend, welcome back to the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, your host. Glad you're back here with me for another week where we talk about how to make school counseling more sustainable and more enjoyable. This week I want to revisit one of my most popular podcast episodes, because I know how tough this time of year can be. Tough this time of year can be. The semester isn't quite over yet, but the pressure is building. You're juggling so many responsibilities you might even be prepping for some evaluations or end-of-semester conversations, and you're trying to meet the needs of your students and your campus. On top of all of that, add in the holiday melee, the extra outreach initiatives that start happening this time of year, and it just gets to be next level and you may even be feeling like you haven't accomplished everything that you thought you would have accomplished by now. At the beginning of the school year, I think we tend to make some big goals for ourselves and it can be difficult to reconcile, as we come into December and January, that we haven't quite attained the results that we thought we would be able to. So this episode feels especially relevant. It talks about the guilt, the stress and the unrealistic expectations that most of us face and how to let go of what's beyond our control, how we can grab onto what's working and how we can truly redefine success as school counselors. So I hope you enjoy this blast from the past. Let's get to it.

Speaker 1:

Hello, my friends, welcome back to another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. I love coming here each and every week to chat with you, to bring you some ideas, some perspective and hopefully some motivation for your school counseling practice, because, goodness knows man, we could all use it right. We've all got to lean on each other, we've all got to be mindful about the way that we're working, and that's one of the things that this podcast really strives to bring you. We're getting geared up for so many amazing things coming up this winter. The holiday season is so much fun anyway, but we also know that this is a time of year that often feels the most difficult, right? Not only are we doing our typical school counseling jobs, we're also doing lots of extras at this time, doing lots of outreach with families, making sure they have things they need coats and meals and gifts and all those different kinds of things and we're also seeing lots of escalating behaviors this time of year. So it just all comes together to create a perfect storm of challenge, right, and of growth for all of us, and so we want to do some really cool things for you to try to give your fall and winter season a little more pizzazz yeah, a little bit more to look forward to, a little more hopeful. So we're going to have lots of things coming your way.

Speaker 1:

Make sure you're a part of our School for School Counselors Facebook group when you go over there and answer the three little questions you have to complete in order to get admitted in. Make sure you put podcast somewhere in your request, and that will give us the clue that we need to get you in extra fast. All right, but we would love for you to be over there. That's where we're going to be announcing a lot of our special events. It's where a lot of that stuff is going to be taking place, and so you've got to be there so you don't miss it. I don't want you to be that one person that feels like they didn't get invited to the party. Y'all this is open to everybody, so come join us at the School for School Counselors Facebook group.

Speaker 1:

All right, this week I want to be talking about how you make peace with a non-comprehensive school counseling program. So from the moment that you begin your education, the moment that you begin studying school counseling, you're hearing about the American School Counselor Association and about how they have their comprehensive school counseling program outline. This is like the holy grail for school counselors achievement. It feels like to be able to run a truly comprehensive program on a campus. It's almost like once you've gotten to that point, you've arrived.

Speaker 1:

The problem is there are many of you that are feeling tremendous pressure to meet the qualifications of that model, to meet all the bullet points contained inside of it. That is not an attainable solution for, I would say, the majority of school counselors, particularly in the United States. We're often tasked with extra, extraneous duties. We're still in that transition from guidance model to school counseling model, and so there are a lot of things that are really muddy. We've got a lot of folks that are not on board just yet with the idea of comprehensive school counseling programs. We have a lot of folks who do not understand the tremendous skill set and value that school counselors can bring to schools when they're allowed to do their job with autonomy. Lots and lots of things going on there.

Speaker 1:

We also have to take into account how busy we are. If you're anything like me, once you walk through the doors in the morning, man, you hit the ground running and you do not stop. There's always something coming at you from all different angles, sometimes at the same time, and so it's up to us to triage what the needs are, how we're going to be able to meet those needs, and we're really juggling, juggling, juggling all the time. I think that's where a lot of the stress comes from trying to align to a comprehensive school counseling program model, because we feel like man. You know, I'm moving a thousand miles an hour, my to-do list is never ending, kids are coming to my door nonstop, and how in the world am I supposed to stop to also try to align with this comprehensive school counseling program, especially when I have not been given the things I need to be able to get there. And so then we start to really get down on ourselves. We feel like we should be meeting this standard. We start shoulding all over ourselves. I should be able to meet this standard. I should be able to figure this out. I should be able to convince people that this is important for our school and for our students.

Speaker 1:

Now, I've said before in a previous School for School Counselors podcast episode that your data, if you're collecting use of time data, but even if you're not just your daily, day-to-day duties, are not a reflection of you. They're not a reflection of your competence as a school counselor, of your professionalism, of your dedication. It's not a reflection of your worth as a school counselor or even as a human being. We've got to really keep that in mind, because I think we often start to really get down on ourselves and we feel like we should be running these programs of perfection but really we can't do it. It's almost like asking us to enter a rope climbing contest with one arm tied behind our packs. It's just virtually impossible. So if you're in that place because, let me tell you I've been there, I sometimes still visit, and I know I know what it feels like. Let me take you on a little journey. It's a journey that we often take our students on when they come to our offices and we forget that this is a destination that we can travel to.

Speaker 1:

Also, it's called the circle of control. Some of you are smiling right now because you know where I'm headed with this. We've really got to be mindful as we walk through these thoughts about comprehensive programs. We've got to really keep at the forefront of our mind what is in my control in this situation and what's beyond my control. You can control showing up, literally or figuratively, right Walking through the door. Even some days, some of you are in places that you don't want to do that, but you can control whether or not you show up. You can control how you show up through your words, your actions, how you speak to your students through your words, your actions, how you speak to your students, your colleagues, your parents, how do you take care of yourself during the school day? This is something some of you need to pay particular attention to. Also, all of those things how you stay current in your role, how do you continue learning? How do you stay on top of counseling ethically All of those things.

Speaker 1:

There are other things you might be in control of and maybe not. Things like how you organize your time. Some of you are fortunate to have lots of autonomy over the way you spend your time in your day. Others of you do not. You're scheduled more like a classroom teacher, so you may or may not have control over that. You're scheduled more like a classroom teacher, so you may or may not have control over that. You may or may not have control over the resources that you've identified and you're utilizing in your programs. They might have been chosen for you. You might be able to choose a small percentage of your resources, and then again, some of you have the freedom to choose whatever you feel is best according to your professional judgment.

Speaker 1:

But then, at the end of it, there are things that are definitely not in your control, things like your counselor to student ratio. Unless you were surveyed and the district said what would you like your ratio to be? Would you like it to be one to 550? And you said oh, yes, please, let's do that. This doesn't apply to you, but for most of us. We don't get to choose our counselor to student ratios. We don't get any say over our budget. That's allocated by someone else Many of you, as I said, you don't have any control over your time constraints.

Speaker 1:

You're told where to be and when to be there. You are not in control of the level of appreciation for the role of school counselor that's on your campus. You're not in control of that. You're not in control of current events, many of those which are making school counseling extraordinarily more difficult than it's been in the past. Now, with regard to some of these things, can we advocate for change? Absolutely we can.

Speaker 1:

It makes me think of Stephen Covey. Do you remember him? Some of you may have read things like the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So he outlines three circles. One is your circle of control, the things that you can control. The next is your circle of concern. That's all your challenges, all your concerns at work. What are all the things that you think about? That's kind of your big circle right, and then right in between those two is something called your circle of influence. It's things that you're not necessarily in control of right now but you might be able to influence in the future, and that's where you really want to identify the goals and the way you want to move the needle for your school counseling program is right there, kind of in that sweet spot.

Speaker 1:

So what do you do to make peace with the fact that you're unable to run a comprehensive school counseling program, especially if you still really feel the pull and the desire to do it? There are a few things I think might help. Number one keep it realistic. All right, you're not gonna be able to turn this giant ship around in this channel in a matter of a few minutes. Right, it's gonna be a deliberate, slow-moving process most of the time. I've said it before and I'll say it again educational change moves at a glacial pace. It takes time. So keep it realistic. And just because you're not running a comprehensive program does not mean that you're not helping students, right. So we got to keep it in perspective.

Speaker 1:

Second, along with that idea, we've got to look for the positive in our circumstances. We've got to find what's going right, because if you don't do this, my friends, you are going to end up in that pit of despair, and I know you've seen these folks on social media. All they can talk about is how horrible their campuses are, how awful their bosses are, how they're overscheduled, they're overworked, they can't get to what they need to. There are too many needs, there are not enough counselors, on and on and on. And that may be very, very true, all right. I'm not denying their truth in their situation. But what I am saying is that, within all those challenges, we've got to look for the positive. We've got to look for what's going right, even if we can't find anything that's going right beyond ourselves, let's start with us. What are we getting right within our constraints? What are we getting right when we're working with students? We've also got to make peace with where we are.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't mean that you have to just blindly accept the current circumstances. It doesn't mean that you can't go find another school campus that might be more aligned to your goals and vision. It doesn't mean any of that. But what it does mean is that most of you are probably under some sort of contract and while you're working out the rest of your contract, while you are navigating the rest of your school year, you've got to figure out a way to make peace with your present sight. A lot of that is giving yourself grace. A lot of that is being patient with yourself as you work through the disappointment of not being able to do all the things you were told in grad school you were going to get to do. There are a lot of folks, especially when they first began their school counseling careers, that have a really difficult time just coming to terms with that, because what you're sold in your grad program is often not what you walk into for your first school counseling position. You might make a list of some of the activities, job duties, things like that that you love to do at school, finding the places that you have fun Somehow somewhere, some way you're having fun with it, even if it doesn't align with a comprehensive school counseling program.

Speaker 1:

I'll tell you right now. Everyone on my campus thinks I am absolutely crazy, because if anyone needs their lunch duty covered, I'm the first one to raise my hand. Y'all, I love lunch duty. I know I told you I am crazy, but I love lunch duty. It gives me the opportunity to connect with my students. It gives me the opportunity to see the dynamics between them and their peers and it gives me a chance to hang out with them in a different kind of way. I love it. Is it part of a comprehensive school counseling program? Absolutely not. But I choose to have fun with it. I choose to find the joy in it, and if it's something that's being shared equally among our administrative staff, I'm not going to complain about it. I'm going to make the best of it.

Speaker 1:

Next, I would challenge you to really think about what it means to be a good enough school counselor. Even what does it mean to be a rock star school counselor? Is absolute alignment with that program model a necessity for serving your students well? Is it a necessity for serving your students well? Is it a necessity for serving families well? Is it a necessity for you to be able to do your job and do it well? Probably not completely right, and I'm not against comprehensive school counseling programs Please do not get me wrong but I think there's some important stats here that are being ignored in our field, and I'm not exactly sure why. No one's talking about this, but here I am again bringing you some information that you probably haven't really heard before. So when you think about being a good enough school counselor, or just, you know, doing the best you can within your current circumstances, I want to put these comprehensive programs in perspective, because the way they're talked about in our national organization, in our state organizations, on social media, which is primarily where most of you guys are getting your information. It's pretty interesting when you start looking at the data and the stats, and these are available publicly. I didn't have any special access to get these, I just started messing around on the internet to see what I could find All right. So I'm going to cite some RAMP statistics. So, if you know about RAMP, ramp is the program that goes through ASCA for schools to achieve what they call RAMP status, and RAMP stands for Recognized ASCA Model Program. All right, so the RAMP program, it says on the ASCA website, recognizes schools committed to delivering comprehensive, data-informed school counseling programs aligned with the ASCA National Model Framework. All right, that ASCA National Model Framework is what drives comprehensive school counseling programs.

Speaker 1:

And everybody's talking about ramp all the time. Right, when are you going to ramp? Are you going to ramp? How do you ramp? This is all you hear when you go to these conferences and things like that.

Speaker 1:

Let me put this in perspective. And again, before I do this, let me tell you I'm not against these programs. All right, I'm not against them, but I do think that they are a barrier and almost a delineation between the haves and the have nots Because most a delineation between the haves and the have-nots Because, again, many of you don't have a lot of say-so over the resources that are available for your programming. You have no say over your ratio, you have no say over your time and how it's allocated throughout your day. So I'm assuming the majority of these ramp status schools are schools that have given their school counseling programs a lot of autonomy, and nothing wrong with that. We're not hating on that. That would be awesome if everybody could get to that point. But at the same time I think a lot of school counselors are feeling really badly about themselves because they want to ramp and there's just no possible earthly way to do it. So if that's, you just know, the inability to ramp is probably not due to your own personal shortfall. We've taken a systemic problem and we really kind of focused it in a way that feels individual, but it's not.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, off that soapbox, let me tell you about ramp status. So there have been an all-time number of 1,200 schools in the United States that have earned the ramp designation. All right, 1,200. The ramp designation All right, 1,200. Currently there are, according to the ASCA website somewhere in the neighborhood of between 400 and 450 schools who hold that distinction currently and so forgive me for not having a hard and fast number there. I counted 424, but I was just kind of glancing through the spreadsheet but it's somewhere in that neighborhood. All right, between 400 and 450 current ramp schools In the United States, there are a total of 97,568 public schools, okay, so when you run that, the number of public schools who currently hold the ramp designation is four-tenths of 1% of all public schools. Why is that important? Because when you start feeling like you're the only one that's not there yet, you need to know you are far from it, my friend, far from it. Only four tenths of 1% currently hold the ramp designation.

Speaker 1:

Feel a little bit better now. Yeah, you should. You should Feel a little bit better now. Yeah, you should. You to deal with things like discipline, right Behavior intervention, crisis intervention, suicide assessments, all of these things going on in our world. Cut yourself some slack. Cut yourself some slack. If you are showing up every day, if you are giving it everything you have, if you are working to serve students ethically right to serve them according to evidence-based interventions if you are treating people with empathy and respect. You're killing it and you're doing the right job.

Speaker 1:

So should we be aiming toward these comprehensive programs? Absolutely, but we're going to have to be patient, we're going to have to band together and we're going to have to encourage one another because it's going to be very much a process of advocacy from the inside out. We're working hard to develop a framework for that type of advocacy. We at School for School Counselors are tired of waiting on outside organizations to come in and bulldoze their way through to change realities for school counselors across the nation, not because we don't think they can do it, but because they need some help. Y'all they're working their guts out to inspire change. But you can only do so much through legislative channels, right Through handshaking, through all these kinds of things. We can come in through the inside out on our campuses and inspire advocacy and change as well, and we're building a framework for that right now.

Speaker 1:

You know they say you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with right and so professionally. Kind of think about that. Who are the five people in your professional circle that you spend the most time with discussing school counseling concepts, thinking about your future in your field, what your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations are, and how you can be constructive with your frustrations. It's a really important piece of your professional journey, and so I hope you have a really strong cohort of five colleagues who are guiding you in the right direction. If you don't, I have a solution for you. You've heard me talk about it over and over and I'm never going to stop talking about it, because I'm such a believer in the power of consultation, support and collaboration with other school counselors who just get it, and the distance that we provide literally literal distance between one another means that we can help maintain your professional safety, that what you say is not likely to get back to your school district or to your campus or your administrator. It's professional safety. We provide consultation, we provide support, we provide collaboration, all with the utmost of confidentiality, y'all.

Speaker 1:

It's an amazing, amazing time, in addition to our library, of all the things your grad school forgot, and we have an amazing new edition coming to that library here very shortly. I'll be talking about it soon, but you're not going to want to miss out on it, so head on over to schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash mastermind, check it out, see all about it. Feel free to message me through our Facebook group. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. I just want anybody who needs this to be in it. I want you to feel supported, I want you to feel excited about your future in school counseling and I want you to feel capable of handling whatever comes your direction. That's my dream and my wish for all of you. All right.

Speaker 1:

So today's action plan is be realistic with your school counseling programming. Keep it in perspective. Find what's going right and focus on that positive. Find what you love to do and have fun in your work. Remember that not everyone is running a comprehensive program, despite what you hear, and that whatever you're doing in your day, as long as you're doing it ethically, you're doing it with the best intentions, you're doing it respectfully and to the best of your ability. You are doing this right. I hope that helps you get fired up for your week ahead. My goodness, I know it helped me. I am ready to go this week and I hope you are too.

Speaker 1:

So again, if you haven't jumped in our School for School Counselors Facebook group, hop on over there. Put podcast in your join request so we can get you in fast, and if you enjoyed this episode, if it struck a nerve for you, if it really made you think and reconsider how you're looking at your work each day, please won't you stop and leave us a review in Apple Podcasts? That is the currency that keeps programs like this running. That's how Apple knows to show us to more people. The more ratings we get, the more reviews we get. The more feedback that we get as our episodes come out, the more we get boosted up so that other people can see it, and that's the whole point of this thing. Right is to get this out to anyone that needs it, anybody that wants to listen, but first they just got to find out about it, and you're an important piece of that. So if you've submitted a rating or review already, thank you. That officially makes you a gold star School for School Counselors member. And if you haven't yet, man, just take a couple minutes please and go rate or review us so that we can continue staying at the forefront of the podcast listings.

Speaker 1:

All right, I'll be back soon with another School for School Counselors podcast episode. Until then, you guys have the best week, take care. Hey there, steph. Again, I hope you enjoyed this throwback episode. It was so fun to go back and hear it again, and I hope that it helped you sort of reconceptualize the way you're doing your work and maybe, just maybe, give yourself a little bit of grace this time of year. The work that you do is tough and your students and your campus are so, so lucky to have you. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. I hope you have the best week, the best Thanksgiving break, and I'll be back with you again soon. Take care.