School for School Counselors Podcast

How School Counseling’s Best Intentions Turned Against Us

• School for School Counselors • Episode 152

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You followed the model. You tracked the data. You did everything “right.”


So why does it still feel wrong?


In this episode, we talk about how school counseling’s best intentions became a trap, and what to do when the map you were given stops working.


If you’re tired of measuring your worth by minutes and metrics, this one’s for you.


Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 4, "Your Data Does Not Define Your Worth as a School Counselor"


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Speaker 1:

I missed my flight. It was a TSA delay. There was absolutely nothing I could have done about it, and it was the day before we were supposed to go back to school from spring break and the school district docked my pay. They said I should have planned better. And that one sentence has stuck with me for over a year and a half.

Speaker 1:

How many school counselors are carrying that same message and that same invisible guilt inside their heads each and every day? I'm going to tell you the whole story in 30 seconds. Hey, my friend, welcome back. I'm Steph Johnson, a licensed professional counselor and full-time school counselor, just like you. 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 pretty graphics and empty promises. Hey, my friend. So here's what happened.

Speaker 1:

I had taken a trip with my family. My daughter is part of an audition only choir event that happens every spring, and we had traveled quite a ways away from Texas. We went to Florida and had a great trip, a great concert late Saturday night, and we were ready to return home early Sunday morning, but on the way back everything just went sideways. Tsa was absolute chaos. It was hours upon hours of standing in line, people waving their boarding passes, pleading to be let through. The lady in front of us was crying and talking in a language that I could not identify and, needless to say, we missed our flight. And then, after we missed our flight, we tried to get on different flights to get home. Everything was booked because it was during that spring break time of year, and we even looked into renting a car and driving from Florida to Texas. We were desperate and in the middle of this I let my school district administration know that we were stuck in a different state. We were likely, after four attempts of flying standby, we're not going to be able to get a spot on a plane and that I would probably not be at work the following Monday. So they docked my pay Just like that, no more questions, and they said we should have planned better.

Speaker 1:

And for a second I almost bought into the idea that I hadn't been responsible enough, I hadn't tried hard enough, I hadn't been prepared enough to get my family home on time. But the truth was there was nothing I could do about any of it, right? So what did we do instead? We made peace with it. We got out of the airport, we went and had a great time. We did some more sightseeing of some things that we didn't get to be a part of during our original itinerary, and we had a great time. My family still talks about how that was one of the most fun impromptu trips we have ever been on together, and I think what made it so great was that it was an unexpected surprise, but also that we didn't let the craziness of the morning ruin the whole day. We let the chaos be part of the journey and we we embraced it and we just had a great time where we were in the moment.

Speaker 1:

So what does that have to do with you and school counseling? It's because I think we do these same things all the time. Let me tell you what I mean. So from day one of our school counseling coursework, we're handed a map right. The map is the ASCA national model. The map is the 80-20 recommendations for time. The map is the 1 to 250 ratio, and we're told that if we just follow the right route, we'll get where we need to go.

Speaker 1:

But what happens when just like my unexpected detour in my trip. What happens when the journey doesn't match the map? Because when they don't match, we don't question the map. We question ourselves right, and we start thinking things like I must have done something wrong, I must be falling behind, everybody else is doing better than me, because we confuse the framework for the destination, and then we beat ourselves up for all the detours we had to take that we didn't choose, all the delays that we couldn't control, and all the expectations that are placed on us that don't even match the reality of what we're doing in our schools. And this is crazy to me, but I have to admit I have fallen in this trap as well. We need to be careful and remember that these maps are supposed to guide us, not shame us. Guide us, not shame us, and so in this episode, I want to talk about how to stop turning these professional tools into personal judgments.

Speaker 1:

So, in order to do that, we have to start by looking at the factory model of education, because 99.9% of school counselors are working within this model. I'll bet you know or have heard somewhere that historically, schools were meant to mimic factory conditions, creating workers for the future, right, and so that's why we have bells. It's like the factory whistle, and a factory model of education is based on things like standardized outputs, visible productivity. You can't have anybody standing at the assembly line idle, idle, an assembly line thinking but guess who doesn't fit that mold? It's us. Our work is not visible, it is often very invisible to the people that we work around. We don't generate a quote unquote product and our pace moves at the speed of human behavior, not at the speed of a bell schedule. So when you can't have the impact on your campus that you're wanting to make, the system starts whispering to you you're not doing enough. But, my friend, that voice is not the truth. That voice is the echo of a system that only understands output.

Speaker 1:

And if you let yourself believe that your output is what measures your worth as a school counselor, you start to judge yourself, just like I almost did with my trip detour Right, because for a moment I thought maybe I should have scheduled an earlier flight. Spoiler, there was no earlier flight and our concert was at 8 pm the night before. There was no way we could have done things any differently. But for a minute I was tempted to think in that direction, and I know that in these school counseling situations you're doing the same thing where, logically, you may know it's not a good idea, but try convincing your heart. And when you start trying to measure your worth by your pace instead of your presence, things get super problematic.

Speaker 1:

So, talking about the map in the ASCA model, let me be very upfront by this and say that I have been critical of ASCA in the past and continue to be, but I am not here to bash the ASCA national model. That model was created to help define our roles and justify staffing and protect our time. And justify staffing and protect our time and, given the right circumstances and levels of advocacy which, between you and me, I don't think we're seeing right now, but that's a whole other podcast episode it could be very advantageous to our field. But here's what really happens with that national model. You know it's preached at us from day one of beginning our school counseling coursework, but our administrators rarely understand it or implement it. Truth be told, that national model has been gatekept behind a $60 price tag for some time. Thankfully, here in the near future, asca says they're going to release it as a PDF. I hope that's true because that's been hamstringing our field for years. But beyond admins not understanding or implementing the model, there's no accountability if schools and districts don't follow it, and education is very accountability driven. So it's no wonder we're not seeing more of this in our schools.

Speaker 1:

And unfortunately, if we want to get really real about this model, we are most often the ones using it against ourselves. You've seen it all over social media, you've heard your friends talking about it and maybe you've even done it to yourself. I can't reach 80% in direct service. What is wrong with me? I didn't run enough small groups this year. I failed. I'm not logging every minute of my day. Did it even matter? Logging every minute of my day? Did it even matter? I know that school counselors are thinking these things because I talk to them each and every week. I know exactly what's going on. And again, to be real, I've done this to myself. I'm not immune to it. I've been there too.

Speaker 1:

And then sometimes it even goes a step further and it creates judgment in our field that program isn't comprehensive enough. Well, their ratio was lower than mine, y'all. That's not what this model was meant to do. And then we have all of this ramp award baloney going on, with less than 1% of schools attaining that designation. Does that tell you something? It's not that you're failing, it's that 99% of the schools in America are in the same boat that you are in. So if you haven't made it there, don't beat yourself up. Most of us won't, and that's okay. But in my opinion, that shouldn't be the focus of this model. Anyway. This model should be seeking to elevate us, not divide us. So if you have in the past, or maybe even currently in your own head, are using this model as a weapon, it's time to stop, because if you're not hitting all the benchmarks and all the criteria of a so-called perfect, comprehensive program, it is not your fault. You are navigating a map that was never designed for the terrain that you are walking and you know what. That's okay. But let's move to another map that I see school counselors relying on a lot as a benchmark.

Speaker 1:

You know I'm a data gal. I believe in it, I teach it, I lead my School for School Counselors, mastermind members, through it all school year long. But, my friends, your program data is not the answer to everything and it is definitely not the place you should be going to find your self-worth. Your self-worth, your data, is only as good as your circumstances right. It's all about the context. If you were in a program where you were able to call all the shots, determine where all of your time goes, and you were never given any mandates ever, at any time, we might expect your data to be on point. But you and I, we don't work in that world, do we? We work in a world where there are specific outcomes that are expected, there are crises that pop up, there are administrators who want to speak for our time before we've even spent it, and so your use of time data is simply a reflection of the priorities of your campus and your administrator. Once you get the golden ticket and you get to call all the shots, then your data becomes a reflection of you, but until you reach that monumental moment where they turn everything over to you, it's simply not a reflection of how good you are in school counseling.

Speaker 1:

It's important, too, to remember that your data does not capture all of the emotional labor that you spend in your job. It's the unseen factor of our work. It's the unseen factor of our work, and sitting across from a kid in a counseling session who is telling you one of the most horrible stories you've ever heard in your life is very different than presenting a social studies unit in the classroom next door, right. It's really hard to quantify what that emotional labor is or what the fallout of it is, and your data also doesn't track the amount of energy that you spend building trust, managing conflict or supporting the other grown-ups that are around you. So when we talk about minutes spent in indirect versus direct services, what we're being pushed to do is to try to count our worth instead of experiencing the job. So if you're one of those that's been obsessing over the use of time charts and logs, trying to prove that you're quotequote an effective school counselor, take a breath. That is not what that data is for. Your data is meant to help you in your advocacy efforts, to support communication across stakeholders on your campus and to highlight the trends. Your data needs to serve as a megaphone, not a mirror. So collect it, compile it and use it, but don't let it define you All right.

Speaker 1:

So here we are, another school year wrapping up another year of wondering did I do enough? Did I do it right? Will next year finally feel easier? I wish I would have done that. I wish I could have intervened there. I wish this outcome would have been different, right? And if you're anything like most of the counselors that I work with, you're already thinking about how to fix things for next year. But what if that's not what you actually need to be considering? It is super difficult to plan for unexpected detours, right, so you're sort of setting yourself up for failure.

Speaker 1:

If that's the way you're going to approach this, what if your most powerful shift for the next school year isn't about better plans or checking more boxes or doing more, but about looking at your work in an entirely different way that helps you feel more confident, more competent and like a stronger school counselor, where you stop chasing unattainable standards, stop chasing perfection on imperfect campuses and stop dragging this pressure behind you, because that is the perfect map for burnout. You, my friend, are not the problem, unless you're just sitting around doing absolutely jack squat. You are not the problem. You are stuck in a role that does not understand what anything outside of the factory model should look like, sound like or feel like. But once you realize that, the game changes, all right. If that hit a nerve for you, good, I'm glad.

Speaker 1:

I want to get you thinking. I want you to conceptualize your work in a completely different way, one that empowers you and reminds you how amazing you are to show up on your campus each and every day and say, yes, I will help. Send that to me. I have a lot more like this coming for you this summer that is designed for school counselors who are ready to work differently, those who are ready to work strategically and sustainably and without selling their soul to these metrics and models and maps that do not match what they are actually doing in the real world. I'm going to be talking a lot about my smart school counseling framework. It's not a curriculum, it's not a checklist and it's not anything that you can put in a binder. It's what happens when you decide to stop trying to prove yourself through these unattainable ideals and start leading in your truth as a school counselor. I'm going to have way more coming up for you in the next few episodes, but for now, here's what I want you to do Step out of the guilt.

Speaker 1:

Step out of the guilt, step away from the noise and be ready to enjoy the detours and the dirt roads that we are inevitably going to encounter in our work. It is okay. It makes the journey all the more rich, and I promise you you're going to be so much better for that, and then next year y'all we are going to do this school counseling thing completely differently. All right, that's it for this episode, but keep listening because I'm going to be back soon with more. Until then, keep fighting the good fight, believe in yourself and know you are amazing for the work that you do every day. Take care.

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Steph Johnson

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