School for School Counselors Podcast
Ready to cut through the noise and get to the heart of what it really means to be a school counselor today? Welcome to The School for School Counselors Podcast! Let’s be honest: this job is rewarding, but it’s also one of the toughest, most misunderstood roles out there. That’s why I'm here, offering real talk and evidence-based insights about the everyday highs and lows of the work we love.
Think of this podcast as your go-to conversation with a trusted friend who just gets it. I'm here to deliver honest insights, share some laughs, and get real about the challenges that come with being a school counselor.
Feeling overwhelmed? Frustrated? Eager to make a significant impact? I'm here to provide practical advice, smart strategies, and plenty of support.
Each week, we’ll tackle topics ranging from building a strong counseling program to effectively using data—and we won’t shy away from addressing the tough issues. If you’re ready to stop chasing impossible standards and want to connect with others who truly understand the complexities of your role, you’re in the right place.
So find a quiet spot, get comfortable, and get ready to feel more confident and supported than you’ve ever felt before.
For more resources and to stay connected, visit schoolforschoolcounselors.com.
School for School Counselors Podcast
A Realistic Approach to National School Counseling Week
*Join the School for School Counselors Mastermind today to become the school counselor you were meant to be.*
In this episode, Steph Johnson, a full-time school counselor, talks through National School Counseling Week, sharing her thoughts on its purpose and the many mixed emotions it stirs among school counselors.
Steph addresses various reactions from excitement to frustration and offers simple strategies for observing the week on campus.
She highlights the importance of effective advocacy, explains why internal support and relationship-building are crucial, and emphasizes the value of recognizing and validating counselors' efforts.
Additionally, Steph provides insights into the School for School Counselors Mastermind and encourages listeners to share their voices for an upcoming podcast episode.
00:00 Introduction and Purpose of National School Counseling Week
03:55 Different Reactions to National School Counseling Week
08:03 Challenges in Advocacy and Support
11:57 Effective Advocacy From the Inside Out
22:18 Low-Stress Ways to Observe National School Counseling Week
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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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If there's one thing that seems to make school counselors feel worse about their jobs than maybe they already do, it's National School Counseling Week. Oh, my goodness, why would I say something like that? I'm going to tell you all about it in this episode and I'm going to give you my take on the purpose, the intention of National School Counseling Week, what you should do about it on your campus, some simple strategies you can use on your campus if you want to, and reasons why you may not want to observe it at all. Oh, blasphemy, I know it. You're going to have to keep listening to hear all the gory details. And a way that you can be featured on an upcoming podcast. Let's get started. Are you ready? All right? Before we get started, let me introduce myself, in case this is the first time that you're listening to the podcast. My name is Steph Johnson. I am a full-time school counselor, just like you, and I am on a mission to make school counseling more realistic and more sustainable. I want you to look forward to going to work each and every day. I want you to feel like you're thriving amidst the busyness and the overwhelm and walk away at the end of the day feeling like you've done an amazing job, you've made great impacts for students and you're ready to go back and do it all again tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Hey, I got a really awesome review on the podcast just a couple of days ago. Awesome review on the podcast. Just a couple of days ago, sarah left a review on Apple Podcasts for us and it was titled Time to Grow. Her review said this Long-time listener, new engager here. My first year was COVID. What a hard year to start, and I also had a six-month-old at home. My second year I had my second child and was out half the year and since then we have been in survival mode. Oh my goodness. Let me stop there and say how many of us can relate to that right? Sarah went on to say I always listen to the podcast but couldn't find the time to participate much past that. Well, now I'm in my fifth year and I'm ready to start growing my craft and expertise, and this podcast has really helped me find a path to do just that.
Speaker 1:Steph is so real and honest and insightful. I truly feel like she has all the answers and is a fountain of knowledge. I don't know about that, sarah, but I appreciate your confidence in me. She ended with saying I couldn't be more thankful for this podcast. My morning commute wouldn't be the same without it. Thank you so much, sarah. You have no idea what those words mean to me and to my team here at School for School Counselors. And really that's the goal here is to be honest and real about what's going on in our school counseling worlds, instead of this super Instagram, perfect world scenario stuff. Right, it is very rare to come across a school counselor that says I found all the answers. I'm running a fully comprehensive program. Everything is 100% online, including my relationship with my administrator. That's really hard to come by, and it's not because we're not great at what we do, it's just because we work in very difficult systems, and so I strive to bring you the realness, the relevancy and the inspiration to keep doing your job, and that's why this review means so much to me. Thank you, sarah, from the bottom of my heart.
Speaker 1:All right, friends, so let's get into National School Counseling Week. We've got a few weeks until National School Counseling Week kicks off, but I'm noticing more and more people posting and asking questions about what's everybody doing for National School Counseling Week. What are your plans? How can I observe it? And so I thought let's get a jump on this.
Speaker 1:This week brings out so many reactions and emotions in our professional world. We see people that are super excited and motivated about it. They just can't wait for it to get started. They've combed all of the Pinterest boards, they have all the ideas, they have all the little gifts and handouts and all the things ready to go weeks ahead of time. Then we have people who feel a little overwhelmed by National School Counseling Week. They feel like they have to put on that big show. They don't know how they're going to fit it into all of the things they're already doing. A lot of school counselors worry about financing initiatives on their campus. They feel like they should be giving things to their staff and they don't know how they're going to afford that.
Speaker 1:Still, other counselors feel very frustrated by National School Counseling Week. They feel like they should not be called upon to do the bulk of advocacy in their work. They wish that other people would stand up and speak for them so they don't have to keep jeopardizing their job by trying to advocate for their program. And even further, we have school counselors who feel very disappointed, very overlooked and sometimes very disrespected during National School Counseling Week.
Speaker 1:These are the folks that go into the week hoping to be recognized, and I think that's a very, very valid hope, especially in school counseling, where so much of what we do goes unnoticed and so much of what we do are things that we cannot call attention to day by day. We can't stand in the hallway and say, oh, you'll never guess what Bobby told me today, no wonder he's been acting the way he has. We can't share in the hallway and say, oh, you'll never guess what Bobby told me today, no wonder he's been acting the way he has. We can't share that kind of information, and so so many things stay below surface. And there's a piece of us that desperately hopes that during National School Counseling Week, someone on our campus stands up and says I see you, I think you're doing a great job. I'm not entirely sure what goes on in your world, but I know it's great.
Speaker 1:And so we have all of these emotions just swirling around between people. Sometimes we have more than one of those within ourselves. And then social media takes off. You know what I'm talking about If you've been in school counseling for a little bit off. You know what I'm talking about If you've been in school counseling for a little bit. You've seen it when folks unfortunately start chastising each other, blaming each other, not empathizing and being our best selves, no matter what the emotion is. I did a podcast episode a year or two ago about that very thing, so if you're interested in hearing it, you can go to our schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash podcast, look through the episodes and you'll find that one around February 2023. That's my best guess.
Speaker 1:But no matter where you sit within that spectrum of responses, please know that every feeling, every emotion and thought that you have about National School Counseling Week deserves to be validated. If you want to be recognized, there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to stand on the roof of the school and shout out your demands and advocacy, you do. You and most of us are going to fall somewhere in between right, but there's no one right way to approach this week and really I think maybe that's part of the problem. Think maybe that's part of the problem. So National School Counseling Week, as you know, is promoted by the American School Counselor Association and while I appreciate that we have this weekly observance, every year there's a different theme. This year, the theme is school counseling helping students thrive, and so I do appreciate the additional emphasis on school counseling during that week and the additional focus.
Speaker 1:I think many of the efforts are misguided. Let me tell you what I mean by that. You've probably heard me talk about the need for more effective advocacy in our field, about the need for more effective advocacy in our field, that it is not fair to expect a school counselor to advocate entirely on their own behalf on their campus and potentially go up against an administrator. That's not receptive. Most of us, me included, we need our jobs, we need our paychecks, we have families who depend on us. We have to be able to support ourselves, and so the idea of going up against our administrator and advocating in the way that our field tells us we should be doing it is scary, y'all it is scary and it is disconcerting and nine times out of 10, completely ineffective. And yet we still have an organization that tells us that that's the best way to advocate. We have state level school counseling organizations who are working their guts out to advocate for the school counseling profession within their state and our national organization kind of leaves it to them.
Speaker 1:Again, I do understand part of that, because states legislate their educational policy very differently and so any policy changes or huge initiatives are probably going to have to go through at the state level. But I also know that the national organization is not providing a lot of monetary support to its state branches. I know that as a national organization they could develop a pretty big platform for advocacy. They could be doing lots more initiatives and bigger pushes than trying to recruit school counselors to download signs and take their pictures with them. This is something that I've been talking about for years, that so many of us are attempting to quote unquote advocate within an echo chamber. Even some of the new information that I see coming out of our organization is all about themselves.
Speaker 1:I'm a board member. This is important to me because Now it's important that we be able to see that right. That's how we learn who these people are. That's how we develop trust within them. We need to know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But y'all, it needs to go further than that, and so I do understand a lot of people's frustrations with the advocacy efforts in general. It's surface level. There is a lack of true systemic change, certainly on a local level, and an over-reliance on school counselors to promote themselves. So we end up feeling unsupported in our budgets, in our staffing, in the level of respect that we get on our campus, in the level of respect that we get on our campus. It's super frustrating and super disempowering. Now, enough gloom and doom, though there are some things that we can do on our side, because, just like our circle of control exercises we do with students, all the time tells us there are certain things we can control and there are certain things that we cannot, and national scale advocacy efforts are one thing that we do not have a lot of control over. But what do we have control over? We have control over how we show up every day. Beyond providing printables about appropriate school counseling duties and inappropriate school counseling duties, or position papers that, I promise you, your principal is not reading, what else can we do? We've been talking in our School for School Counselors world for a long time about advocating from the inside out, and I always give this example.
Speaker 1:Imagine you're in your home doing what you do. You might be relaxing with a cup of coffee. You might be working inside your home. You might be taking care of housekeeping tasks, you might be hanging out with your family, whatever. You're inside your home and all of a sudden, someone outside starts beating on the doors and windows, screaming and shouting at you. You're doing it wrong. You can't do it that way. That's not right. We're not doing this right. I need to tell you how this needs to be better. Let me in. Let me in. You're not going to open the door for that person. You're going to say they're crazy, they might be dangerous. No way are they getting in here, right?
Speaker 1:It's not a good way to advocate, but that is the way most school counselors have been taught to do it by drawing boundaries. That's what it's often called. Tell your principal you're not willing to do that Y'all. That is a death sentence on a lot of school campuses. You are not in a bargaining position yet to tell them what you will and will not do. Schools are struggling to maintain personnel. They're struggling with funding and often what you see as disrespect is an administrator just trying to keep the wheels turning. So showing up with a printable telling them what you should be doing and what you should not is not going to go over. Well, that's the same as beating on the doors and windows, screaming and shouting.
Speaker 1:What we have suggested for years is advocating from the inside out being able to develop a relationship with the people inside that house so that when they see you coming, they want to open the door, they want to invite you in, they want to say come in, take a chair, let's talk about it. But you don't get there with a bunch of papers in your hand or a social media post holding a sign. So how do you get there? Intentionality there are a couple of pieces of that approach and it's something that we don't have time to talk about on this episode of the podcast, or we will be here for hours, but let me see if I can boil it down for you really quickly. These are the things that we work on in our School for School Counselors Mastermind. That's why we don't provide printable lessons and curriculums.
Speaker 1:We're focused on something bigger, more intentional, more impactful, where we teach you to develop the right relationships with your administrators, even if they're difficult. How do you develop know, like and trust with them so that they're willing to listen when you speak, like and trust with them so that they're willing to listen when you speak? We talk about developing professional fluency how to be able to talk at the drop of a hat about what's going on on your campus and what the possible solutions might be, and to be able to talk about those things with authority, with confidence, with competence and without second-guessing yourself or having to run to consult a manual or chat GPT. That's a bad idea. By the way, it can be done. We have school counselors in our mastermind who have done a phenomenal job of this and at times have even had people whose positions were slated to be eliminated who were able to advocate their way through. And then, last use of time being able to verify what you're doing in real time is invaluable. There are ways to set that up so that it's not overwhelming, so it does not feel like it's just another thing piled on top of the to-do list, and we support and encourage and educate our Mastermind members on how to get that implemented.
Speaker 1:As you work through those, you're going to develop a reputation, not only with your administration and your staff on your campus, but eventually word will start to get out. People will start to talk about man. My school counselor is really amazing. Have you heard of them? You'll never guess what they were able to do. You'll never guess what they were able to do. You'll never guess what they told me. And that is how you develop the reputation for advocacy from the inside out. You can be a changemaker within your own community, I promise you. You just need the support and and the resources to be able to do it without burning yourself the heck out.
Speaker 1:Okay, so back then to National School Counseling Week. There is a huge debate. Is National School Counseling Week supposed to celebrate school counselors or is it supposed to be an advocacy push? Your purists will tell you that it is only for advocacy's sake, that you should not expect to be recognized, that you should not expect anything during this week, that you should just give and give and give and advocate your heart out, and I appreciate that perspective. I don't know that it's super sustainable for us regular Joes. I don't think a pat on the back ever hurt anybody, and it's amazing what it does for you when someone comes to you and says I see you Right, we feel so invisible sometimes with the things that are going on on campuses.
Speaker 1:We can't talk about our work Sometimes. We don't have a team, we're working solo. We don't find out about all the things going on on our campus because we're kind of just working in our zone. We can sometimes feel removed from the other processes on the campus, and so for somebody to walk up and say, hey, I appreciate you, I appreciate the work you're doing, y'all, that means everything, and so if there's a piece of your heart that's wanting that, don't feel bad about it. Everybody needs support and encouragement. You are no different.
Speaker 1:But if you don't receive it, don't take it personally. And that's a hard one, because it feels very personal, doesn't it? Because in our mind and in our world, we're going to be deluged with National School Counseling Week information. We are going to be thinking about it, we're going to be waiting and hoping and wondering all week long what's going to happen? Is anybody going to say anything? What am I going to do? Our social media worlds, our emails, they're all going to be about National School Counseling Week, and so to us it's going to feel like everybody should know about this when in reality, most people on school campuses have no idea.
Speaker 1:So if you're not recognized, if you aren't thanked, it may not be personal, they may not have realized it. And y'all, don't beat yourselves down because of an expectation. You know, the minute we start expecting people in our lives to do something is the minute they almost certainly go the other direction. Right, and it may not be because of you. They may be ignorant of what National School Counseling Week is. They may not even realize how important it is to you. When I was a teacher, I never realized what a big deal Counseling Week and School Psychologist Week and Cafeteria Workers Week and all those weeks, what a big deal. That was Because in my world we celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week and everybody was in on it, so it was never a big deal. I never had to take a different perspective and it wasn't until I started the school counseling work that I realized how important these weeks are for our niche colleagues. So keep in mind, they may not even realize that this is a big deal to you.
Speaker 1:And if it feels too heavy, if you just feel so disrespected and you can't reframe it, you can't turn it around in your head and you're just feeling terrible about it. Maybe you've had a hard year already this year. That's when you know you need support and consultation. That's when you know you need to be able to speak your truth in a forum of people who get it. And again, that's what our School for School Counselors Mastermind does each and every week. That's what we're all about, my friend. That's what we are all about.
Speaker 1:Before I end the episode, let's talk about some low-stress ways that you can observe National School Counseling Week on your campus, even if you're overwhelmed. But again, let me say you're not expected to do this. There is nothing wrong with sitting back and just taking the week as it comes. All right, there's no expectation for you. It doesn't mean that you're a terrible school counselor. If you're not tying hundreds of yards of ribbon on water bottles or snacks or printing posters or doing all the things that you see pictured in the world during this week, your efforts say nothing about you other than you might be tired, and I think that that is fair.
Speaker 1:You could do some one and done things. An email to your staff with just kind of a brief like did you know this about school counseling? Did you know we actually have mental health master's degrees? Did you know that we don't provide therapy? We refer kids out for that? Some people don't know those things. We assume that they do because that's the world we live in, but often they don't. There are going to be tons of those out there, so keep your eyes open. We've got one available in our mastermind. We just wrapped up our training on National School Counseling Week. A couple of weeks ago we talked about our plans for that week, if anybody was going to do anything, and we have a huge sheet of ideas, a library of resources to be printed out and used with low cost, low effort. Tons of stuff in there for our mastermind members. Second thing you could do is leverage some of the meetings or events already going on on your campus. Could you stand up in a staff meeting? Could you stand up in a PLC, those kinds of things, and just talk about what you do.
Speaker 1:Let your passion for your work shine through. I think that's one of the ways we go wrong in advocacy. We talk a lot about the mechanics of school counseling, what we do, where we do it, how we implement these things on the campus, but we very rarely talk about the why. What brought you into school counseling? What lights you up about it? What makes you keep walking through the door every day, even when you had the hardest day ever the day before? What is it about this job that gives you life? Share that rather than you know well, I have currently have five small groups going this week. I regularly see about 15 to 20 students for individual counseling. I also provide nobody cares about that.
Speaker 1:Everybody on your campus feels like they are overworked and stressed. They are not going to ally with you over a list of responsibilities and the mechanics of your work. They are all working hard. So appeal to their heart. Let them see why you do the work you do, because I promise it will be so much more impactful. Or can you just organize something quietly? Can you maybe celebrate with your small groups and call it a day? Our students are the most fun to celebrate with anyway. Our students are the most fun to celebrate with anyway. Can you organize something at home with your family? Hey, you know, this is National School Counseling Week. I would just really love to go out to dinner.
Speaker 1:Those are all excellent ways to observe this week if you feel like you want to do something, but I think the point here is do not overextend yourself. Focus on things that are manageable and meaningful instead of the go-big Instagram photo ops, because those things are a flash in the pan. They're here today, forgotten tomorrow. Make an impact, make your words matter, communicate what's in your heart and make your celebration be what you want it to be.
Speaker 1:All right, that went on a little bit, but I hope you hear my heart for you and for the work that you do, and every time that I sit down behind this microphone to record a podcast episode, I think about how lucky and how grateful I am to be in the presence of all of my wonderful school counseling colleagues, people who know they're going to be dealing with some of the hardest things on their campuses, they're going to be hearing some of the worst stories and continue to walk back through the door the next day. You continue to raise your hand and say put me in, I'll take care of that. I want to support kids, I want to make a difference, and I think that is one of the most phenomenal things that anybody on our planet could do supporting our children with a true heart. So I want to thank you ahead of National School Counseling Week for the work that you do, for your tenacity in the way that you approach your work, for your heart, for advocacy, because even through your frustration, it shows that you care, and to me that's the most important trait of a successful school counselor. I have two things for you to think about. First is if you are interested in what's going on in the School for School Counselors Mastermind, if you're interested in learning more about how to advocate from the inside out, how to develop your fluency for professional competence or, if you need those support and consultation communities. Our membership is always open and I promise you I go above and beyond to make it more than worth it for you. If you're interested in that, you can go to schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash mastermind. We'll have all the information there for you. If you're interested in that, you can go to schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash mastermind. We'll have all the information there for you, as well as a button you can click to join us. The second thing that I want you to think about and I try not to give you too many of these at the end of the episode, but this is super important I'm getting ready to do a National School Counseling Week podcast episode and the desire in my heart has been I want to share your voices about your work.
Speaker 1:I have a platform within School for School Counselors and I want to use this platform to share your voices and your passion about your work. I want people to hear what lights you up about your job and I want to share that on the podcast episode. If you're interested in that, hop on over to our podcast webpage, schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash podcast and you're going to see a link that's going to take you to a page with a little microphone in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Click that microphone and you're going to be able to record a voicemail straight to me. I'm going to get it in my email inbox and I'm going to take my favorite voicemails and put them into my episode for National School Counseling Week. It's going to be super fun. I would love to hear everybody's thoughts and perspectives, and it's kind of cool to hear your voice on the podcast. So I would love for you to do that.
Speaker 1:Schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash podcast. All right, I'll be back soon with another episode. In the meantime, keep fighting the good fight in your schools. My friends, you're doing great work and you're making awesome impacts, even if it doesn't always feel like it right Day to day. Sometimes we lose sight of that, but I promise you it is happening. Keep listening for the next episode of the School for School Counselors podcast and until we meet again, I hope you have the best week. Take care.