School for School Counselors Podcast

School Counselors Deserve Better! The Advocacy Problem No One Admits

• School for School Counselors • Episode 135

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Happy National School Counseling Week! Or maybe not?

There’s a growing divide in how school counselors feel about this week—some dive in with enthusiasm, while others don't want to be bothered. And honestly, after what I’ve been seeing lately, I get it.

In this episode, I talk through the uncomfortable truths about school counseling advocacy: what’s missing, why it matters, and how we’ve been misled about who’s actually fighting for us. (Spoiler: If you think your national organization has your back, you might want to think again.)

I also break down concerning new legislation across the country, exposing the lack of organized advocacy in our profession, and sharing why our current efforts just aren’t cutting it. But here’s the thing—we’re not powerless. There’s a better way to advocate, and it starts with YOU.

If you’re tired of the same old conferences and feel-good slogans while school counseling falls apart behind the scenes, this episode is for you.


00:00 Mixed Reactions to National School Counseling Week

01:23 Facebook Group Insights

02:49 Legislative Concerns and ASCA's Role

04:30 Critique of ASCA and Advocacy Issues

14:30 State Organizations and Legislative Challenges

21:46 Call to Action and Positive Notes

22:32 Listener Submissions: Why We Love School Counseling


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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, hey there, school counselor, happy National School Counseling Week. This episode is going to go live on the first day of National School Counseling Week and I am so excited to be here celebrating it with you, even if you're not that excited about it yourself. We've been doing some polls and questions in our Facebook group and in other places, just kind of getting a vibe check on the whole National School Counselor Week thing. Where do people stand, what are they doing? And it seems to be about a 60-40 split where we've got 40% of folks kind of diving in to do something for National School Counseling Week and feel super excited about it and super motivated, and then about 60% of the people that we've talked to saying that either it's just another week or I really don't want to celebrate National School Counseling Week. You know I talked in episode 133, which is two episodes back from this one it was called A Realistic Approach to National School Counseling Week about a lot of the big feelings we have about this week, and so I don't want to rehash that information. You can go back and listen to it if you want to hear that. But I do want to talk about something that sort of blew up in our Facebook group this week and I would also love to share with you some insights from your friends and colleagues about why they love their work.

Speaker 1:

So if we haven't met, I'm Steph Johnson. I'm a full-time school counselor, just like you, on a mission to make school counseling feel more sustainable and more enjoyable. I want you to feel competent and confident every day you walk through the front doors of your school, and tonight I'm recording this episode. It's the Sunday night before the Monday that it's going to go live, so talk about living on the edge. I'm recording in the evening because the flu has hit our house. I have a kiddo down with the flu. I have one down with what appears to be some sort of mystery virus. At this point We'll see where that one heads. But it's just a season, isn't it, of sickness and of snow and of lots of things going on. For so many of you, it's kind of a tough time of the year. So if you're feeling like you're struggling, you are not alone, I promise you. Our plates are just so full. Our plates are just so full, which kind of brings me back to the Facebook group Brew Ha Ha.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you didn't catch it, here's what happened. I had been scrolling the socials getting my own vibe check on the things going on in school counseling world, and I picked up a lot of information about a lot of concerning legislation in a lot of different states pertaining to school counselors. And so as I read these and learned about them, of course I went and verified the source first of all, because sometimes, you know, things can get exaggerated on social media, right, they can get inflated. So I wanted to make sure that I understood what was really going on, and once I did that, I kind of just made a little list of all of the things I was reading about. And the more that I read through all of these proposed bits of legislation, the more concerned I got. And then in one post in another Facebook group, a commenter commented this, and I don't know why it hit me the way it did in that moment. I had seen this comment many times before but for some reason, in that split second of reading this comment, I thought man, we got to talk about this. And the comment was does ASCA know about this? It lit a fire in my soul y'all, and I could not help myself. I had to answer that post and then write a post of my own in our School for School Counselors Facebook group and I'll give you just a little piece of it, just so that you know where I was coming from.

Speaker 1:

Asca is not your advocate. They will not come to your aid. They do not provide support to your state organizations out there trying to do the dirty work of changing hearts and minds and legislatures, right now on a shoestring. But they have no problem letting you believe they will. With our memberships, we are supporting an educational endeavor, nothing more. And by allowing people to believe that they will step in and advocate, they have sealed the deal of the decline of school counseling across the country.

Speaker 1:

That parts my opinion and I'm sticking to it, man. I mean, I will tell you, I have been thinking this way for years and I have alluded to it here and there in the past. And I have alluded to it here and there in the past, but it is really on my heart to start getting more vocal about this, to really start talking about this, because I do believe that lack of organized advocacy in our industry right now is on the verge of promoting our collapse. And I'm not saying that because I'm trying to sensationalize it. I'm not saying that because I'm just trying to get everybody all in a dither Not my goal at all. But if you look around, you're going to start seeing what I see. If we start looking at the bigger picture, we're going to see these little threads that we've been watching unwind year after year are now creating some giant holes in the fabric of school counseling.

Speaker 1:

I went on to say this this is not an attempt to badmouth the organization, it's just setting the record straight. So many people aren't aware of the realities of our national organization Conferences, journals, position statements, a model of unfunded expectations parked behind a paywall Y'all. Do you realize that in order to get a copy of the ASCA national model, you have to go online and buy it, and it's almost $50. How do we convince our administrators what our jobs are supposed to be if they have to pay $50 to even find out what it is? This is crazy to me, absolutely crazy. And then, to wrap it up, I said there are no pics of ASCA personnel testifying before state legislatures or meeting with school board leaders.

Speaker 1:

There's not even any social media proof of trying to sway public opinion, of trying to sway public opinion. We've been under heavy fire post-2020 and nary a public peep about that from their corner. If some of these legislative pieces pass soon, such as requiring school counselors to have a psychological evaluation to work with the kid, you know how it happened. The lobby is weak, it's neglected and it's showing. I am 100% sure that I'm going to get a lot of flack over that. I have no doubt in my mind and one of the ways I know that is as soon as I published that post in our Facebook group, we started getting a flurry of join requests from people who are very ASCA affiliated. They all of a sudden were interested in what we were doing in our little corner of the internet, presumably because they either wanted to see what I was saying about ASCA or they were coming to defend themselves. I'm not exactly sure. We have not admitted them into our group yet. We put a pause on that just because we don't want the drama. We take a lot of pride in having the most drama-free school counseling group on the planet and we intend to keep it that way. That doesn't mean that I'm closing off conversation with these folks. Once everybody's settled down a little bit and we're ready to have some constructive conversation, we'll be glad to invite them in. In the meantime, if you know any of them or maybe you were one of the people that was letting them know about all this stuff, because I do know we had a few members that were doing that, and that's fine have them. Email me, steph, at schoolforschoolcounselorscom. I welcome the dialogue. I want to know more about this because I want to be well-educated in my opinions. Right now I'm reporting on what I see and I'm very aware that there are things that I have absolutely no idea about, and if someone wants to come clear the air with regard to those, I am all ears.

Speaker 1:

But all that to say, these kinds of situations are probably why you're feeling so frustrated and ambivalent about National School Counseling Week, because it is a mess. It is an absolute mess. The truth is we have no large-scale advocacy in place. We have a lot of conferences, we have a lot of awards, we have a lot of distinctions that everybody likes to pat each other on the back for and not taking anything away from those folks, for people that have achieved RAMP or that are a school counselor of the year. I mean that's amazing, but are we focusing in the right direction for our journey at this time? Sure, school counselor of the Year and RAMP programs might help promote awareness of school counseling, but there's so much more that needs to be done.

Speaker 1:

This week, asca posted a position statement on some of the new president's remarks, and that is all we've seen from them. Advocacy-wise. National School Counseling Week is coming up. In my opinion, just knowing what I know about promotion, about reaching people on the socials, they should have already started a warm-up campaign for this. I haven't seen one, and again, I'm not here to criticize only them. In my post, I said a lot of state organizations are working their guts out. I do think that is true. However, I will be honest, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of that either, and so if we're trying to change the hearts and minds of people who make these decisions, who are in the legislature or who have the ears of those that are, we need to be getting more information out in a more efficient manner, in a more targeted manner and in a more intentional manner.

Speaker 1:

I have nothing against them. They have built a brilliant ecosystem of trainings, conferences, all kinds of credentials, certificates, you name it. But, guys, they've made it very clear they do not intend to build an advocacy organization. They intend to build an educational platform, and those are two very different things. Every once in a while, you'll see them toss the word advocacy around in one way or another. But is it intentional? Is it targeted? Is it designed to change the trajectory of some of these proposed bills? No, it's not. They're waiting to see what happens and then they're going to react, just like they do with everything. They're either going to issue a position paper or they're going to tag themselves on the back of someone else's. We saw that a lot during COVID. Not mad at them, not trying to talk badly of them, but I do want you to be educated and informed. They are not your advocacy organization.

Speaker 1:

Here's the good news. We need some good news in all of this right. We do need some good news. You're not helpless. You have the power to advocate from the inside out. I don't think that the way that you've been taught to advocate for yourself from these organizations is the right way to do it. I think we need to be focusing on advocating from the inside out, meaning developing the professional fluency to be able to have needed conversations at the drop of a hat, differentiating yourself from other school staff Y'all your printable lessons are not going to do that. If anything, they make you look like a second grade substitute teacher. Get rid of that stuff. And third, building a sustainable and strong relationship of know like and trust with your school administrator. All three of those things have to be in place to effectively advocate from the inside out. So that's step number one.

Speaker 1:

Step number two is leaning on your state school counseling organizations. Now, the bad part about this is that they don't have a lot of money. Most of the school counselor organizations are operating on a literal shoestring and have leaders that are getting paid a grand total of zero dollars to lead the organization. This is true. There are a few state organizations that can't afford to pay their leaders, but they are few and far between last I checked. So I thought, in all of this talk about advocacy, let me look at the organizations and see what's going on on their state pages. Let's just get a quick look-see of what's happening. So I pulled up a list of the first 10 school counseling organizations in the United States, starting with Alabama, ending with Georgia.

Speaker 1:

I went to every single school counselor association site in the first 10 states to see what they had on their homepage. Because, with legislative sessions starting, with all of the federal politics going on right now, one would assume that we would seize material on their homepages to educate members, to educate the public something. And on all of those webpages, except for a couple, there was nothing about advocacy Zero. Most of them were about their annual conferences. Remember what I said about building an education platform instead of an advocacy platform? Yeah, it's reached the state organizations too. Colorado props to Colorado. They shared the ASCA position statement from this week but then went right to their conference that's not going to be held until October. Connecticut's webpage is the most current Out of those first 10,. They mentioned National School Counseling Week 2025, nominations for awards. Everybody else was either e-learning conferences or nothing.

Speaker 1:

But then, before I got too discouraged, I thought you know what, steph? That's not a good way to look at this. Let's look at the pending legislation in states, let's look at some of the most concerning bills involving school counselors and let's see what those state organizations are doing. Maybe it's just because all of these states aren't in the thick of that stuff right now, right? I mean, I don't know when everybody's legislative sessions are. So I went and pulled some of the most concerning bills I'd heard about, and I also searched all pending bills in the United States for the words school counselor, and I kind of picked out some of the ones that bothered me the most.

Speaker 1:

In Mississippi Senate, bill 2611 seeks to remove the acquirements of school counselors to follow the ASCA code of ethics. That's an odd one to me. I don't know why that would be a push. I feel like there's a story behind that. So I went to the Mississippi School Counselor Association homepage nothing. Their X feed, formerly known as Twitter, is blank. Okay, and that's not great.

Speaker 1:

So then I went to my home state of Texas. Texas Senate Bill 559 strikes the word certified from all descriptions of school counselors. Yeah, they, they, I guess, think that anybody can be a school counselor. They're just going to start hiring people off the streets, I don't know. And then in another bill House Bill 1510, it does the same thing. Now you guys know they've already passed legislation in Texas to allow chaplains to serve in a school counseling role on campuses. So I guess this is the next step. So I went to the Lone Star State School Counseling Association homepage. There's nothing on it. I clicked the advocacy tab. It hasn't been updated in a year.

Speaker 1:

Next up Indiana Senate Bill 523, providing for chaplains to come on campus to provide advice. Because you all know that's what we do with school counselors. Right, we just sit back, we chat with the kids and then we give them advice about what they should do next. These people are sorely mistaken about our level of training. Again highlighting the need for effective advocacy, but I digress Indiana's homepage no information about it whatsoever on the homepage or under the advocacy tab. Y'all. I'm not trying to light these people up, I'm just highlighting a weakness that I see in our industry.

Speaker 1:

South Dakota House Bill 1201 requires school counselors to gain consent from parents before beginning a counseling relationship with a student and requires the school counselor to notify the parent if the counseling session contains a substantially different subject matter. Really, what they're talking about is gender identity. Looked at the home page no information. Looked at the home page of the school counseling organization looked at the homepage of the school counseling organization no advocacy or organizing information there. And North Dakota this is my favorite one so far and I'm being extremely facetious when I say that North Dakota House Bill 1490 requires school counselors to undergo a psychological evaluation before providing services to students. Who comes up with this stuff Legit? I saw a comment on our Facebook page this morning. Someone said if they're going to require school counselors to get psychological evaluations, they ought to require the administrators to do one too. That made me laugh. North Dakota went to their school counseling association homepage and you guessed it squat. So again, I'm not talking about this because I'm trying to badmouth people.

Speaker 1:

Again I say these associations are running on a shoestring. They're not even able to pay the people working within them because they get no support from the national organization. To my knowledge, according to ASCA's tax returns, they have not distributed any money to the state organizations other than the dues they collect on their behalf. Those state dues are usually pretty small compared to the ESCA dues. Right, and I think, more to the point, what this illustrates is the fact that we are stuck in the cycle of education.

Speaker 1:

We are so bound and determined to continue talking about trainings and webinars and models and conferences that were missing the forest for the trees, friends. If we don't do something soon, we won't have any need for these conferences anymore. They won't be happening, and I hate to sound like the sky is falling, but y'all, it kind of is, and it seems that everyone's just sort of sitting back going oh well, you know let's, let's just wait and see what happens. So I hate to be such a downer, especially on a week like this week, but man, we got to start talking through this because this is getting to a point of critical mass and I'm not seeing a lot of movement on it. So contact your state associations, ask what you can do to help, volunteer, put in a few hours a week, creating posts for their Facebook groups, creating articles for their homepages, educating people on these pending pieces of legislation. Do something, find some way that you can help, because if you don't, we're going to end up with this kind of baloney all over the United States and it's going to be extremely difficult to do the jobs that we spent so much time and so much money acquiring.

Speaker 1:

All right, well, enough gloom and doom. I do have some awesome news and a higher note to end this podcast episode on. I asked our School for School Counselors, podcast listeners and Facebook members to submit what they love most about their school counseling work, and we got a lot of great submissions. So, as I leave you for this episode, I'm going to let you listen in on some of my most favorite voice memos. I hope it lifts you up. I hope it inspires you for National School Counseling Week and remember as you listen and reflect on what it is that you love about this wonderful profession. Reach out to your state association and ask how you can help, and then follow through.

Speaker 3:

I love being a school counselor because I get to be someone that kids can always count on, whether they're having a great day or a tough one. I just love watching them grow and helping them feel understood and helping them build their confidence and seeing the impact of these small moments of connection that we have, like when a student feels seen or learned something new about themselves. It just makes this work so truly meaningful to me.

Speaker 4:

What I love most about school counseling is building relationships with my students and their families. There's no better feeling than being able to build that connection, help those students and their families and let students know that while they're at school they are so very loved.

Speaker 2:

I love working with kids and helping them on their journey through life, as they face obstacles, and helping them overcome those obstacles. I also love working with staff and teachers, because they do so much for our kids on a daily basis and helping them.

Speaker 5:

School counseling is a job that gives me a sense of purpose. How lucky am I to have this job. I love so much about school counseling. It has been a wonderful career for me. I love the variety that we have in our day. Every day is a new day. I love seeing the students and their aha moments, Like I had a class leave about 10 minutes ago and one of the students said gosh, your class is kind of like therapy. I know we're not doing therapy, but it was so great to see that she made the connection. It was good for her to do what we did today in our lesson. So I just love that when the kids can see and benefit from what you're doing.

Speaker 6:

It's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 6:

Hello, my name is Glenda Meadows, and what I love about being a school counselor is I get the chance to positively impact the life of a child every day in the most simple ways. I've been a school counselor for 31 years and I get joy from the smallest things, like giving friendly smiles that may help turn around a student's day, or seeing a student's eyes light up when you help them to find money to buy a yearbook, or the tight hug that a student gives you at the funeral of his dad who passed away unexpectedly. I learned early on in my career that we can have impact by simply building meaningful relationships with our students, and that is my why. That is what I love about being a school counselor. Now, don't get me wrong. I understand the importance of the big things like accountability and data, classroom guidance and small groups, 504s and behavior management plans, but for me, it's the little things, the little intangibles, that have sustained me through the years.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, sustained me through the years. Thanks, all right. I hope you loved those as much as I did. Keep fighting the good fight. We're all in this together and I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. Take care.

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Steph Johnson

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