GRADED: Use-of-Time Data

You know that feeling when it’s Friday, and you can’t even explain what you did all week?

Use-of-time tracking is supposed to help- but too often, it feels like just another way to keep school counselors in check.

This week on Graded, we’re pulling apart one of the most pushed- but least supported- tools in school counseling.

We’ll talk about:

• Why it’s recommended in the ASCA model—and required in some states
  
  
• Why real-world counselors struggle to make it stick
  
  
• What happens when it’s used for control instead of clarity
  
  
• And how it can be helpful—if you’re the one holding the reins
  
  

If you’ve ever felt like you’re working nonstop but still have no proof of it…
this episode might feel like a breath of fresh air.

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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.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Bank Balance Analogy
• 1:45 Why Time Tracking Creates Mixed Feelings
• 4:56 Real Challenges of Tracking Counselor Time
• 10:15 The Hidden Value of Time Data
• 17:30 Getting Started On Your Terms
• 19:50 Next Episode Preview and Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Do you ever check your bank balance and immediately do a double take Like what what's in there? You know you haven't been doing any wild spending, just maybe groceries and gas this time of year, maybe a few back-to-school things. But the number will still catch you off guard because it adds up fast and you really can't even remember quite how it happened. Feel familiar Probably does, because that's how the end of your school week might feel too. You know you worked hard, but if someone asked how you spent your time, you'd pause your time. You'd pause. Hey school counselor, welcome back.

Speaker 1: 0:53

In this episode of our graded series. We're digging into one of the most recommended activities in school counseling use of time tracking. It's supposed to help with advocacy and bring a clearer picture of your day-to-day work. But does it actually help or does it just add more pressure to an already impossible job? I'll share why most school counselors avoid it, how it gets misused in our schools and what it can actually show you if you do it on your own terms. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work and a little bit of rebellion, you're gonna be in the right place.

Speaker 1: 1:35

I'm Steph Johnson and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. Use of time tracking is one of the most recommended approaches in the school counseling world, but let's be real, it can also be one of the most misunderstood or misused, or sometimes just plain unfair systems that are being pushed onto our plates and, depending on where you live, you may not even have a choice. Some states, like Utah, kansas and Texas, require school counselors to collect use of time data regularly as part of their day-to-day work. Other states are quickly following suit and while this was supposed to be a way to protect our time and clarify our roles on campus, in practice I'll be real it often feels like a setup, because no other educator on campus is expected to do this not teachers, not assistant principals, not diagnosticians, just us. We are the only ones asked to prove day by day, minute by minute, that we're spending our time correctly, that we're aligned with some sort of model or that we're doing it right. So today we're going to talk about all of that why use of time tracking was even recommended in the first place, why so many counselors struggle to make it work, what it actually can do for you when used well, and whether or not it deserves a spot in your week or in your recycle bin.

Speaker 1: 3:19

Let's start with intentions. Use of time tracking was never meant to feel like a punishment, although some of you may feel exactly that way. The idea was simple If school counselors could see how they were spending their time, they'd be better able to advocate for their role, identify any misalignments and make adjustments. You could show the data to your administrator to make things crystal clear. It was supposed to be empowering, like holding up a mirror to your week, so that everyone could be on the same page. That's why the ASCA national model recommends it. That's why training programs mention it and why it shows up in journal articles, job descriptions, pd sessions, you name it.

Speaker 1: 4:12

But what started as a tool quickly turned into a requirement in a lot of states to maintain funding eligibility or to ensure alignment with multi-tiered systems of supports or to be in compliance with school counselor evaluation rubrics. And again I have to say let's stop right here and call it out. No other educator role is being tracked like this. Teachers aren't clocking how many minutes they spend actively teaching versus grading, principals aren't categorizing their walkthroughs versus discipline and psychologists aren't documenting every single minute spent consulting with staff, but school counselors are expected to prove that we're using our time appropriately. And somehow, in the middle of all of that, we are still the ones accused of not doing enough. So even if the original idea was helpful look at your time so you can protect it the way it plays out often feels more like surveillance than support. Which brings us to what happens when real-world counselors try to actually do this kind of work, because in practice, the theory of track your time, see where it goes, use that info to advocate for your role is never that clean.

Speaker 1: 5:37

There are a lot of concerns and things that hold school counselors back from jumping into collecting use of time data. One of the problems is that choosing a collection tool feels like a dang research project, because you have to figure out how you're going to track this time. Do you want to use a spreadsheet or a Google form? Do you want to use post-it notes and just pray that you're going to remember to write it down in the right place later? Or do you pay for a software platform, something like Scuda, but then you really don't have any training about what to do with it. The options can feel really complicated and often they're hidden behind paywalls. No one tells you what the best approach is, but somehow it gets treated like it should be a no-brainer.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Secondly, it feels impossible to track time when you can't hit pause. Let's say you do pick a method to collect your use of time. That's great, but now comes the harder part, which is actually remembering to log what you're doing. Most school counseling doesn't happen in nice neat little 30-minute or even 15-minute blocks. You start working on a 504 plan, you get interrupted by a crisis, then you have to run to lunch duty, then you come back to find a parent waiting at your door. You don't have time to stop to document all those pieces and by the time things slow down, your memory is hazy or you're so drained you don't even want to think about it. That's the part of use of time collection that no one talks about, because you often feel like you are in survival mode. Moment to moment You're reacting, adjusting, navigating a hundred things, and a lot of those may not make it to the spreadsheet.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Third, it contributes to the just one more thing syndrome, because for a lot of school counselors, use of time tracking feels like it's one more metric in a job where we already feel like we're falling short. We don't need any more information to let us know we are not hitting the mark. Even though we are giving it everything we have, we get frustrated and discouraged by never being able to attain those ideal standards. So use of time tracking becomes another system that we're just supposed to maintain that takes time away from what we actually need to be doing on campus. Or it feels like just another checkbox that sort of makes you look like you're in control of something, but really it's not in your control at all. You look like you're in control of something, but really it's not in your control at all. I've seen school counselors get emotional and even cry over this, not because they don't want to collect the data, but because the pressure of doing it right made them feel like they were failing even more. And these folks were already carrying the weight of feeling invisible or under-resourced or misunderstood on their campus and they decided that they didn't want another task. That felt like a test.

Speaker 1: 8:52

And then, fourth, what do you do with the data once you have it? Let's say you do track consistently for a week or a month or maybe even a whole semester. You've got a beautiful colorful pie chart. You've got some graphs and a breakdown of your time. But now what If no one's asking to see this, if there's no plan for sharing or advocating with it effectively and that's a key point there, because just shoving it under your administrator's nose is not effective advocacy or if you hand it to them and they're willing to look at it, but they don't even understand what it means when they have it, then all that time and effort feels like it was busy work, and then we begin to wonder was this even worth it? Now let's pause there, because I'm coming down pretty hard on the idea of use of time data. I will tell you, though, that, despite all of these concerns, I still believe that use of time tracking has value for school counselors Not if it's being used as a compliance tool or a gotcha system, but it gives you something way more powerful than we usually give it credit for.

Speaker 1: 10:09

When use of time tracking is done by you for you, not because somebody's breathing down your neck it can be one of the most empowering things you ever do in your career. First, it can remind you just how much you do. When you are running and putting out the dumpster fires non-stop all day, it's easy to feel like you're never doing enough, because nothing ever feels resolved right and then you're running. So you forget. Maybe some calls you made or the list of students' names that you've supported that week all start to run together, or you can't keep track of all the crises you managed or the plans that you updated or the meetings that you sat through. It all just blurs together. But when you come up with a system where you can log it, even briefly, you start to see the volume of your work. You can see clearly the weight that you carry and then you realize I'm not slacking. I am saving the days in 15 different ways.

Speaker 1: 11:24

I've seen some of my school for school counselors, mastermind members, go through their use of time data and say, whoa, look at that. No wonder I'm so tired, because sometimes the tracking isn't about advocacy or compliance or fixing anything. It's about you being able to acknowledge what's already happening and to give yourself some grace and understand that you are literally doing everything that you can Use of time. Data also gives you a paper trail that you can lean on. We all hope it never happens, but sometimes your work can be questioned. It might be a parent or an admin, or maybe it's that teacher that wants to know what are you doing when you're not in the classroom. Use of time data can be very protective because it's a clear professional record of where your time went and why. It's how you prove that your school counseling program isn't just you sitting in your office waiting for students to walk in and talk about their feelings. It provides you documentation and credibility and, ultimately, it's CYA school counselor style. Third, your use of time data can shift conversations with your administrators without the drama.

Speaker 1: 12:50

The way that school counselors are taught to advocate in our field right now is absurd. It is absolutely ridiculous to encourage professionals to print out a piece of paper from the internet and shove it under their principal's nose and expect change. In all the years that I've been mentoring school counselors and the thousands of school counselors that I've had conversations with, I can tell you without a doubt, I have never, ever heard of that approach working ever. There has to be a better way, and if your principal wants to know how you're spending your time, this is it, my friend, because it's no guessing, it's no feelings, no interpretation, it's just numbers. That way, when it's time to have the conversation, you don't have to feel defensive or angry or emotional. You just show the chart and you explain the imbalance and, because it's not personal, you're able to fully invite a conversation. Here's what I'm seeing. Let's talk about how to fit this new initiative that you're wanting into my schedule. Where would you like for me to place this? What do you see? That's not confrontation, that's strategy.

Speaker 1: 14:11

And fourth, your use of time. Data can become an anchor for you. One of my favorite things is to have my use of time display up on my second monitor all day long, and it's kind of funny because when we have people that are new to our campus or maybe haven't visited in a while and they walk into my school counseling office, they will look at that data dashboard and they'll say, wow, what's that? And I get to explain. I log every single minute of my day, every single school day, and they're like how do you do that? It looks impressive, it's fancy, it's color-coded, it looks very official. But the reason that I love having it on my display isn't because of the wow factor, although that's a pretty cool side effect. What I love most about it is that it reminds me of what I'm doing. I need to see that data every day to prove to myself that I'm doing enough.

Speaker 1: 15:18

If you're like me and you're carrying two or three times the recommended school counseling caseload. Even if you have the best outlook on your work, you still have those days where you feel like man, I'm never going to make the grade, I'm never going to get there, and that can feel discouraging. When you can see visually what you've been doing day to day, week to week, month to month, you prove to yourself that what you're doing is enough, because this job will never stop asking you for more. There will always be another request, another crisis or another. Hey, could you just help me real quick, right, and you can feel like you're being buried in an avalanche. But that use of time data will give you back some perspective and it's going to remind you you are doing more than enough.

Speaker 1: 16:17

So, to be clear, I don't think that use of time tracking is a magic fix. I don't think it's going to change your entire campus culture overnight or make your principal suddenly drop to their knees and say I've seen the light Now. I understand. It's not going to make them suddenly respect your time, but when you use use of time data on your terms, it can give you something that is really hard to come by in this line of work and that's confidence, that validation that just sits in your soul, that says I may not be able to do everything, but I'm doing something. You start to realize things like oh, that's why I'm feeling so tired or so irritable. Or, oh, you know what, maybe I'm not as scattered as I thought. I'm covering five people's worth of tasks.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Or this job isn't just big, it's unreasonable, especially if the expectation, either from your administrators or from yourself, is trying to perfectly align to a model that doesn't really match your campus in the first place. So is it even worth trying? Well, it all depends on how this information is being used and who's holding the data. It can be powerful for self-reflection, it can be great for advocacy and documentation and it can help you reclaim your confidence in your work. But it can feel overwhelming if you don't have the right system in place or if you allow it to create pressure to perform instead of space to reflect. So for this assignment, I'm going to give use of time tracking in school counseling a solid B. It's not perfect, but it's still pretty great and it's worth trying if you get to do it on your own terms.

Speaker 1: 18:16

If you've been avoiding use of time tracking because it feels like one more thing to manage. You are not the only one. Here's what I recommend Commit to one week, use whatever format feels easy A notes app, sticky notes, a random spreadsheet. Make sure it's in compliance with your district data policies and go forth Heck. Get a spiral notebook if that's your jam. Place each task in one simple category, even if it's vague Direct services, indirect services or non-counseling Done. You don't need a full blown out system, you just need a snapshot. Commit to that one week, then look at it just to see what's real. Because I bet once you do, you're going to realize you're not falling short. You're just doing more than you or anyone around you realizes. And if you're looking for a place to build that use of time system that fits your reality, come check out the mastermind, because we talk about data each and every month, not only the tools needed to capture it, but how to set up systems so that you actually remember to do it. And then we work together to tell the stories the data reveals. We build systems that actually work on real campuses in real time.

Speaker 1: 19:44

Hey, if you think I've been killing some sacred cows so far, you ain't seen nothing yet. In the next episode I'm going to be talking about small groups for everything. What are the benefits, what are the drawbacks, and should you really be running as many as you are right now? Keep listening, because 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.