5 School Counseling Mistakes That’ll Bite You in August

What you forget in May will come back to bite you in August. In this episode, we cover 5 school counseling mistakes that cause chaos when the year starts- and how to avoid them while you still can.

You’re running on fumes. May is chaos. And the last thing you want is another “end-of-year checklist.”

But here’s the truth: what you forget now will turn into a full-on mess in August.

We’re walking through 5 school counseling mistakes that seem small in May but turn into massive headaches when the new year hits. These aren’t the obvious ones, either. We’re talking about the subtle slip-ups that leave you scrambling, frustrated, or starting from scratch… again.

You’ll learn:

• What to jot down now that’ll save your sanity in the fall
• Why “data reflection” doesn’t have to mean hours of spreadsheets
• How to close out the year with intention (even if you’re over it)
• The one thing you’re probably skipping that sets the tone for August
• A smarter, simpler way to stay sharp over the summer (without burning out)

If you’re a school counselor trying to finish strong without falling apart, this episode is for you.

Mentioned in this Episode:

School for School Counselors Mastermind

List of Closure Activities for Students

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⭐️ Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! ⭐️

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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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Chapters

• 0:00 May Madness: Counselors in Survival Mode
• 7:10 Mistake 1: Not Leaving Breadcrumbs
• 13:47 Mistake 2: Ignoring End-of-Year Data
• 19:06 Mistake 3: Office Chaos at Departure
• 22:25 Mistake 4: Missing Closure Opportunities
• 25:33 Mistake 5: Skipping Meaningful Summer PD

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Oh gracious. May is a weird month for school counselors. You're somehow like running as fast as you can but also crawling at the same time toward the finish line of the end of the year and every day feels like it's three weeks long. And then you look back and it feels like the weeks were gone in the blink of an eye. It is so strange and you're doing probably some more classroom coverage than normal awards ceremonies.

Speaker 1: 0:37

We have all these last minute crises coming in, often from kids who are just starting to realize that their safety net of school is about to be taken away for the summer. And then we still have the ongoing vortex of behavior referrals and emotional meltdowns, and maybe you're having some too. May is rough and for some of you, june is rough because you're going into June. If you're like me and you're trying to get through all these things in the day, at some point someone's going to ask you what are you doing this summer? And honestly, I got asked that the other day and I froze because I haven't even gotten to August in my head yet. I'm just still trying to get through the last week of school with kiddos and my last weeks on duty on campus and I haven't even thought about vacations or trips or anything that I want to do. So if that's you, I want you to know. I totally get it. But as we march toward the end of the school year, we need to also remember that how we handle our last few weeks is going to have a direct effect on how behind we feel when we're starting in August and on whether or not we walk in feeling confident and prepared or whether we walk in feeling overwhelmed and kind of already behind.

Speaker 1: 2:04

So in this podcast episode, I want to walk you through five common end-of-the-year mistakes that school counselors make. And it's not because you're disorganized or you're careless. It's usually because of the opposite. It's usually because you are so busy taking care of everybody else on your campus that you forget you also need to do some things for yourself. So we're going to change that. We're going to talk about the mistakes. We're going to talk about what you can do instead, and as you listen, you can kind of check the boxes and decide whether or not you are ready to go for the next school year. You might hear some things you want to implement and make sure you get done, because they're not finished yet, or you may listen and think man, I'm a rock star. This is already ready to go, but either way, this episode is going to be amazing for you. Hey, my friend, welcome back. I'm Steph Johnson, a licensed professional counselor and full-time school counselor, just like you.

Speaker 1: 3:09

If you're tired of school counseling advice that sounds like it came from Pinterest, you're in the right place. Around here, we're keeping it real, we're keeping it grounded and I'm giving you tools and ideas that actually work, because you deserve more than graphics and empty promises. All right, so mistake number one that school counselors often make at the end of the year is not leaving enough breadcrumbs for the August version of you. When we're in the thick of it, when it's down and dirty on campus in May and June, it's easy to think that we are going to remember all the things and we tell ourselves things like I'll find that student when school starts, I'll remember to talk to them, or that would be a really great idea for a group in the fall, or this kid's 504 accommodations were not helpful. We need to make an adjustment and you think that you're gonna hold all this information in your brain and that you're gonna be able to retrieve it when you go back in August or September. But once you're in summer mode, hopefully you're going to forget all about the things that were happening on campus. Hopefully you're gonna be taking some amazing trips. You're going to be resting and rejuvenating, and once those margaritas kick in, your best intentions might get forgotten. And it's not because you don't care right, but when you come back at the beginning of the school year, you're going to have other stuff popping up too. You might have enrollment issues, you might be dealing with schedule changes, new staff trainings and a million interruptions. Right? Can I just ask you a question? Do you just have a second? Do you know anything about this kid, those kinds of things? And on top of all that, if you haven't left these breadcrumbs, you're going to spend all of your energy trying to remember what it was you wanted to remember instead of moving forward with your new concerns. So I suggest starting a beginning of year folder. It doesn't matter if it's Google Drive, if it's in a regular notebook or even if it's just a big sticky note. Just make it something that you won't lose and that you can't misplace, and in that folder, just drop things you're going to want to know about when school starts up again.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Maybe it's students who might need some immediate check-ins. These are the guys that you know are going to come back to school dysregulated or needing support, because you've seen it before. Maybe it's lists of teachers or parents who requested follow-up or that you want to follow up with after the summer. Hey, how was the summer? How were those services I referred you to? Did they help? What are you seeing now? That kind of thing? Maybe it's some group ideas that you wanted to do in the spring but didn't have the time or energy to implement. Maybe it's the names of staff members that you know are going to collaborate with you like nobody's business, and you just want to remember who your all-stars were the previous year. That one sounds silly, I know, but you'd be surprised what you forget in the span of just a few months.

Speaker 1: 6:29

Maybe you need to keep lists of failures from this school year or retentions or things like that. Have them all there, ready to go, so you're not having to scramble and try to remember where they're all located, even if they're in your SIS, your student information system. It sure would be nice to have a report already printed or saved somewhere ready to go and then non-counseling needs that you're going to be looking at in the fall? Who is going to need to be in your food program? Who showed up without a coat all winter? That you need to start sourcing winter items for as soon as school starts? Who relied on school supply donations? These are absolutely issues that are going to show up again, and so if you are already a step ahead in thinking this direction and you simply have to open this folder to access your quote-unquote memory, you're going to look like a rock star. Think of your beginning of year folder as a love letter to yourself. This is a way of saying your work matters. It's important. Let's not lose this in the shuffle, because I believe in the impacts that you're capable of making All right.

Speaker 1: 7:48

Mistake number two is ignoring your end-of-year campus data. Now, you might have just gotten a little shiver when I said that, because you're thinking man, I'm just trying to finish what I've got on my plate right now. I sure don't want to go look backwards, and I certainly don't want to have to go access any data to do it. I'm sick of talking about it, I'm sick of looking at it. I don't want to know any more, but your campus data is going to be one of your best sources of insight, and it's something that most school counselors, I find don't start looking at until the fall, and by that time it's usually too late to plan anything big with any sort of intention. So if you can start looking at things like which students were repeatedly getting referrals, which grade levels had the worst attendance, where were the most consistent academic struggles on your campus Could have been kids, could have been certain classes, could have been certain grade levels, or which students came through your office over and over and over again, this is the roadmap for where you're headed next year, because even if a few of these kids don't come back to your campus, we're still going to see referrals, attendance and academics, and all of those concerns are not going to simultaneously move away right.

Speaker 1: 9:23

So we need to have these at top of mind and this doesn't need to be like a full-blown data analysis. We were talking about this in our School for School Counselors Mastermind recently, and I was telling members that I feel like the data conversation in school counseling has been way overcomplicated and as we gathered for our monthly data discussions meeting and we were talking about the kinds of data that school counselors had either collected or had access to and what they wanted to do with that data. It was kind of blowing their minds how we could put that information together in a streamlined way and make it so easy. So instead of it feeling like it's going to take hours like you often hear when people talk about school counseling data we could knock it out in 20 or 30 minutes. So take 30 minutes sometime at the end of your year and look for patterns. Even if you only find one or two takeaways, that is going to set you up for some phenomenal impact for next year. Do not wait until beginning of your PD to start thinking about these things. Look at it now, while it's fresh, so you don't forget.

Speaker 1: 10:45

Mistake number three. This one sounds kind of stupid, but I'm here to tell you I think it happens more often than people admit. I have caught these undercurrents for the last few years with a lot of school counselors that I work with at the beginning of the year. So I feel like I can say this with certainty and this one feels like it's kind of minor, but it's really not. Every single July we host an event called Best Year Ever, and I hear it from counselors who walk in their office and immediately feel overwhelmed because they're walking into paper piles, mystery binders or like these random notes that we scribble to ourselves on sticky notes, and then you know we walk away and a few weeks or a few months later we have no idea what those notes we're talking about and then you don't even have any memory of what you were doing the last few weeks of May. When you start the year like that, it sucks the momentum right out of you. Your energy is depleted already and it makes everything feel harder.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Now I know this sounds dramatic, but how many times have you walked into your office after a summer break and you've opened a desk drawer or a filing cabinet drawer or something like that, and you come across the mystery pile Stuff that you stashed in May or June because you were just running so hard you didn't want to have to deal with it. You didn't have the mental energy to sort through it and to put it where it went and you thought I'll get to it later, but you never did. You don't have to go all Marie Kondo on your office, right? This is not about transforming your working space, but if you can spend like 10 minutes every day during the last week of school. You could toss the stuff you know you're not going to use anymore. I just did that last week.

Speaker 1: 12:44

I went through all of my hanging file folders and what few resources I keep on hand. I tossed out probably three quarters of them. To be honest, there are only a few printed resources that I even use in my office anymore, so I tossed those out. I tossed out a bunch of these workbooks for students people have been giving me over the years Y'all. I would rather stick a pencil in my eye than sit a kid down with a workbook, and so I got rid of all of them. But I digress. You could also use this 10 minutes a day to file materials or label the things that you want to keep.

Speaker 1: 13:21

File materials or label the things that you want to keep, or leave yourself some notes. Over-explain what you think you need to communicate. Use this for Red Ribbon Week, not just leaving an extra copy in the file. Or these are fall group materials for attendance concerned. Whatever. Over-explplain it because you may not remember so well when you come back. You can even label these are extra copies. Don't print them again, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 13:52

So you're not organizing for the sake of making it look good because, let's be honest, you could just shovel that in a drawer and lock it and no one would be the wiser. Right a drawer and lock it and no one would be the wiser. Right. You're organizing so that you can step back into your work quickly and calmly and not have the mental load of having to shuffle and sort through it just to go. What is that again? Where does that go? Okay, yeah, it goes there. We want to eliminate all of those roadblocks from the get-go. All right, moving right along. We have talked about three mistakes so far Not leaving breadcrumbs for the start of the new school year, ignoring your campus data and leaving your office in chaos.

Speaker 1: 14:34

The fourth mistake I often see school counselors make is missing closure opportunities with students as well as staff. This one is easy to miss because we are running like our hair is on fire and we feel like we can't get all the things done right. I often tell the teachers on my campus the last week of school, when you guys are living it up, having parties, watching movies, doing all the fun stuff, I'm in the background working harder than I ever have trying to get things finished up and closed out for the end of the school year, and I don't tell them that to make them feel bad, but there is a distinct contrast, and if you're working like I do, which I imagine you are, if you're listening to the podcast, you know what I mean. But closure matters a lot to a lot of people, and one group we don't typically think about closure for is our staff. I'm guessing you probably have teachers, paras, administrators or office staff that had your back this school year. Maybe they were helping to alert you to students who needed support. Maybe they were defending your time, maybe they were defending your role, maybe they were checking in or maybe they were just a great friend to you. Acknowledging that builds trust. It not only strengthens your reputation as a great teammate, but it builds your social capital. It makes people more likely to look forward to working with you again next year.

Speaker 1: 16:18

So take a few minutes and write a couple thank you notes, or send a quick email, or even just stop for a hallway chat. Let people know how much you appreciate them in your efforts. Let them know what their contributions meant, not only to you but to the students. Y'all this does not have to be formal. Just make it genuine. That's all it needs. And then, if you have some students that you've worked with a little bit longer term in counseling services, you sure don't want to ghost them when school's out.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Right, your students deserve some closure. They need to know that the work that you did together matters and they need to recognize that they've made progress. There are a lot of ways to facilitate closure with students. I can help with a list of those if you're interested. I'll drop a link into the show notes here and you can download the list. Pick three to five students that maybe you saw the most and let them know that your time with them mattered, that they have what it takes for the summer and that you're going to miss them.

Speaker 1: 17:29

All right, so now we're down to mistake number five. This one you might not want to hear, but I'm going to lay it out there anyway, because you know I'm all about the straight talk. Mistake number five and this is the one I think I see most often with school counselors is skipping meaningful summer professional development because you're too tired. Now let me be clear before I launch into this one. You do not need to spend your entire summer doing school counseling training. That sounds terrible, but you also don't want to go to the other extreme, where you don't do anything at all, because then you may come back not feeling as prepared as you could have, maybe a little less motivated, maybe more reactive than you would have been had you had a few more tools in your tool belt. Here's what I know from my own personal experience. If I don't spend just a little bit of time over the summer thinking about what matters to me professionally in my school counseling program, I feel like I start off the year behind and really at risk of just recycling and repeating the same old things I've always done. I don't like that, as a matter of fact. That's why I host my no Stress Summer Book Study in my School for School Counselors, mastermind and y'all.

Speaker 1: 18:54

I could not be more excited about the book that we have chosen for this summer we're going to be studying Thrivers by Dr Michelle Borba. It's research based. It's a real world guide for helping students build the internal strengths that predict long-term success. In the book, dr Borba outlines seven essential character strengths and how those traits help kids thrive instead of just surviving. And what I'm so excited about with this is that it's going to be super practical. It's going to be very evidence-based and it's not going to require you to buy any programs or printables or anything like that. And then we're going to be collaborating across grade levels all summer with this book, talking about how we weave these traits into our schools efficiently and effectively. Things like what does curiosity look like in a high school counseling intervention group? How do we encourage perseverance in third graders without having to teach a lesson or bring in a whole curriculum? How do we reinforce empathy on our campuses without feeling like we're the empathy police? It is going to be amazing, practical, inspiring, useful and it's not going to eat up your whole summer.

Speaker 1: 20:21

We meet once a week. We call it a no-stress book study, because even if you show up a week or two here or there and you haven't had time to read, that's okay. We got your back, we got things in place to help. You still get so much out of the conversation. But nevertheless, whatever avenue you choose to pursue for your summer school counseling PD, make sure it's meaningful. Make sure it's not just one of these online summits with 47 different school counselors that signed up to present something random out of their programs. Dive into something that can be cohesive, something that can really help build your school counseling program instead of you just constantly trying to piece together all these little one-off things. Does that make sense? Make it meaningful, really go for depth instead of breadth of experience, and I promise you it's going to pay off. If you want to keep your school counseling brain sharp, with us, we have a seat for you at the summer book study table. You can find out more at the link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 21:25

All right, so we've talked about the five most common end of year mistakes that I see school counselors making Not leaving breadcrumbs for the next school year, ignoring your campus data because you're just so over it, leaving your office in chaos, missing opportunities for closure and skipping meaningful summer professional development. I told you I was going to give you five mistakes. I'm going to add a sixth one just as a bonus, because I'm always a little extra right. And the sixth mistake that I see is failing to reflect before you leave. This mistake is so easy to make because once you finally get to the end of the school year, all you want to do is lock the door and not look back, and you need to rest right. But you also need closure. And if you don't take time to do this kind of reflection, you might end up repeating some things that you don't actually want to repeat next year.

Speaker 1: 22:35

So before you walk out of the door for summer, think about these three questions First, what went better than expected? Second, what do you want to stop doing next year? It doesn't mean you're drawing a line in the sand, you're just considering it. And third, what do you want to fiercely protect moving forward? In other words, what are your non-negotiables? This doesn't have to be like a big journaling session. It doesn't have to be pretty. Most of my answers to things like this are scratched out on Post-it notes somewhere. You can even write it down on a napkin or the back of the envelope that your electric bill came in, it doesn't matter. But get these thoughts out of your head and get them into the real world so that you can start to process them and prepare for an amazing new school year. My friend, the end of the year can feel like absolute chaos, but if we can try to avoid these school counselor end of year mistakes, we will walk into next year with something that most school counselors don't have and that is a head start. So just as a reminder I know I just mentioned this, but it's so important If you want to enter your summer with a purpose and exit into fall having a plan, come join my no-stress summer book study.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Inside the School for School Counselors Mastermind. We're reading Thrivers. It's going to be real, doable ways to support student resilience across every single grade level, without any malarkey, without anything unrealistic. This is going to be real world, applicable stuff and you're going to be in a community of counselors who are serious about getting better at what they do. If you want to be an all-star school counselor, if you want to start to develop the kind of clout and expertise on your campus that makes people go, hey, we should ask the school counselor about that. They know what they're doing you need to join us.

Speaker 1: 24:50

You can go to schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash mastermind for the information. I'll also have the link in the show notes. You can just go down there and click it. You don't have to end in survival mode. You can finish strong. You are just a few steps away from walking into the next year more prepared than you've ever been. It's going to be amazing and I'm so glad that you lent me your ear. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, I hope you have the best week. Take care.