GRADED: Minute Meetings

Minute meetings look great on a spreadsheet. But do they actually help kids? In this episode of Graded, I dig into where this practice really came from, the myths we’ve built around it, and the risks nobody’s talking about, and I’ll share what to do instead.

Minute meetings have taken on near-folklore status in school counseling. They’re all over Pinterest, pushed in Facebook groups, and praised as the “must-do” way to reach every student. But here’s the problem: they didn’t come from research. They came from a 2011 blog post that went viral because it looked proactive and admin-friendly.

I’ll unpack why so many counselors have latched onto them, and the real costs hiding under the surface: wasted time, shaky privacy practices, legal risks, and the illusion of equity. 

Most importantly, you’ll leave with stronger, evidence-backed alternatives- systematic data analysis, teacher consultation, and SEL strategies- that replace documentation theater with practices that actually change outcomes.

If you’ve ever wondered whether minute meetings are helping or quietly hurting your program, this episode is for you.

References (Annotated)

American School Counselor Association. (2005). The ASCA National Model: A framework for school counseling programs (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Author.
This framework formalized the profession’s shift toward “comprehensive, data-driven” programs. Its expectations created pressure on counselors to prove contact and impact—conditions that made quick-fix strategies like minute meetings appealing.

Dahir, C. A., & Stone, C. B. (2006). The transformed school counselor. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Captures the post-ASCA Model climate of accountability and data demands. This context helps explain why counselors gravitated toward visible, trackable practices like minute meetings, even without research support.

Kathuria, T., & Pandya, A. (2023). Can a five-minute meeting improve the wellbeing of students? The Indian school experience. Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools, 33(2), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/jgc.2023.12
The only peer-reviewed study even remotely related to “minute meetings.” Though conducted in India and using a different model (five minutes, not one), it highlights how little empirical research exists to validate this practice in U.S. schools.

Schultz, D. (2011, December 28). Got a minute? School Counselor Blog. https://www.schcounselor.com/2011/12/got-minute.html
Earliest known mention of “minute meetings” in the school counseling world. 

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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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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

Chapters

• 0:00 A Student Crisis Missed
• 3:28 The Origin of Minute Meetings
• 9:00 Marcus's Story: Seeing vs. Reaching
• 12:11 The Uncomfortable Truth About Equity
• 15:39 Legal Risks and Ethical Concerns
• 20:01 Better Alternatives to Minute Meetings
• 25:25 Final Grade: D for Minute Meetings

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

A 13-year-old is hospitalized for severe depression. His school counselor had just talked to him three weeks earlier. The school counselor had documentation proving that she contacted the student. She had a color-coded spreadsheet showing completion of all of her minute meetings, but she didn't have the one thing that might have helped the student sooner. She didn't have real insight into his struggles. So what went wrong and why are thousands of school counselors making the same mistake right now? Is it you that's coming up? Hey, school counselor, welcome back In this episode of our graded series.

Speaker 1: 0:59

We're examining something that's become almost folklore in our field minute meetings. The uncomfortable truth is that minute meetings didn't come from research. They came from counselor blogs and spread like wildfire because they looked good and sounded proactive. I'll share what the evidence actually shows, the legal risks most counselors don't know about, and why this practice might be undermining the very students it claims to serve. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work and a little bit of rebellion, you're going to be in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Picture this it's 4.37 pm on a Tuesday and Maria Santos I'm changing their details for privacy. She sits in her cluttered school counseling office staring at her computer screen and row after row of Google Form responses are scrolling past Fine, good, fine, fine, good, okay, no problems. She's just finished her minute meetings for the year. All 387 students on her middle school caseload checked off in nice, neat little rows. She should feel accomplished right. But Maria feels empty because one of these students who said they were fine, who'd smiled politely and said everything was great during his 90-second check-in, was hospitalized after a severe mental health crisis. The student got the help he needed, but the question that haunted Maria, the school counselor, and really should haunt all of us, was this how did a so-called comprehensive approach miss a kid who was struggling so deeply? We'll come back to Maria's story, but here's the unsettling part the practice that she relied on minute meetings was never built on research, and yet it's become one of our profession's most unquestioned traditions.

Speaker 1: 3:22

All right, so let's start by examining where minute meetings actually came from, because the origin story may surprise you. If you guessed research or peer-reviewed journals or evidence-based practice frameworks, you'd be wrong. Minute Meetings came from a 2011 counselor blog post, and the idea went viral through Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers. Think about that for a second. Through Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers. Think about that for a second we have elevated a social media trend to a professional standard. It's like making TikTok dances part of your curriculum because the kids like them. But meanwhile, evidence-based alternatives, teacher consultation programs, classroom SEL curricula, targeted interventions like check-in, check-out, which we talked about in the last episode those all sit unused because they're not as Instagram-worthy as a color-coded spreadsheet.

Speaker 1: 4:26

But to really understand how we all fell for this, we need to go back in time to see where it all changed. So picture 2003. Asca has just published the first edition of its national model revolutionizing how we were supposed to think about school counseling. Suddenly, we weren't just guidance counselors anymore, we were supposed to be comprehensive program managers. That model was brilliant in theory Data-driven programming, systematic delivery, accountability measures but by 2011, eight years later, many counselors were either being ignored or were drowning. The national model demanded sophisticated program management skills, administrative support and time allocation that most of us just didn't have. Picture that school counseling landscape. We're trying to implement this comprehensive model.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Administrators are asking for data we don't know how to collect and we're desperate, absolutely freaking desperate, to prove our worth. And then, like a life raft in a stormy sea this idea appears Quick check-ins with every single student, one to two minutes each, simple questions, log the responses, boom, comprehensive contact achieved, data collected and ask a model, boxes checked. It spread like wildfire because it promised all the things we so desperately wanted Equity, data collection, impressing our administrators. We didn't ask for research, we didn't demand validation, we just believed in it because it felt right and it looked good in it because it felt right and it looked good. But here's what we missed. Good intentions don't guarantee good outcomes.

Speaker 1: 6:39

Now, before we go further, I want you to pause this episode for just a minute, really, and go look at your minute meeting spreadsheet. Or, if you don't do them, imagine one minute meeting spreadsheet. Or, if you don't do them, imagine one. What do you see when you look at those responses, row after row of good and excellent, or 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, if you're asking scaling questions. Now ask yourself is that truly data that moves the needle or is it theater? Think about it for just a minute. Keep that image in your mind, those rows of all of those fine responses, as I tell you about a student named Marcus.

Speaker 1: 7:32

Marcus was in the eighth grade. He was always in the same desk, third row back right side, closest to the door. His school counselor would later realize that he'd been claiming that spot because it gave him the quickest escape route out of the classroom. When his school counselor, janet, called him for his minute meeting, marcus did what eighth graders do. He gave the expected answers How's home? Fine, school going okay? Yeah, feeling safe. Uh-huh, Anything you want to talk about? No, I'm good. Janet noted his responses in her spreadsheet 90 seconds check mark next to his name. Next student Three months later, marcus was hospitalized for severe depression. Turns out his parents were going through a really brutal divorce. He was sleeping in the car some nights just to avoid the drama and fighting and shouting. His grades were tanking, but he was too ashamed or maybe too proud or maybe too scared to say anything.

Speaker 1: 8:43

In that minute meeting Janet had seen Marcus. She had documentation proving that she had made contact with him, but she hadn't reached him. And that's the difference between activity and impact. Here's the part that still bothers Janet. While she was spending 30 hours on minute meetings that year, she missed the real warning signs and opportunities to help. Marcus's English teacher had noticed he was falling asleep in class. His PE teacher saw him wearing the same clothes multiple days on end and the custodian relayed that he was often the last to leave the building. The system that could have caught Marcus was right there, only no one was looking at it.

Speaker 1: 9:34

And that brings us to the uncomfortable truth we need to face about what minute meetings really are, and I need you to hear this because it's going to challenge everything you believe about minute meetings. They are not equitable, they're performative. You and I both know that real equity does not mean giving every student the same thing. It means giving every person what they need. So when you give your trauma-affected student the same one-minute check-in as your high-achieving, well-supported student, you're not practicing equity, you're practicing equality, and equality in a world of unequal needs is actually inequitable. Think about it this way If you had a hospital where every patient, from the person with a broken finger to the person having a heart attack attack, got exactly two minutes with the doctor, would you call that good medicine or would you call it malpractice? So why do we accept that in school counseling?

Speaker 1: 10:49

Let me give you some numbers that should make you feel really uncomfortable, because I spent weeks searching for research supporting minute meetings. I looked in academic databases, counseling journals, research reviews, and you know what I found? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The closest thing that I could find was a 2023 study from India about five-minute meetings. It was a different practice, different context, different student population, but that's as close as I could get.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Meanwhile, we have evidence-based alternatives that actually work. Teacher consultation and training programs have shown remarkable success in identifying at-risk students. Classroom-based SEL curriculums reach everyone while building universal coping skills. And Check In Check Out even though I gave it a hard time in the last episode has evidence showing it actually changes student outcomes for the right students. But check-in check-out doesn't photograph well and teacher training doesn't fit in a Pinterest pin. We chose the trendy over the tested. Now let me be very real, because if you've been doing minute meetings and believing that it was best practice, I'm with you.

Speaker 1: 12:22

I did them too. I remember sitting in my office one day. It was raining outside I remember that because that's pretty unusual for my neck of the woods and I was hearing the rain patter on the glass door outside of my office because, of course, I did not have a window right and I had a student in my office who was telling me the absolute worst story I had heard or have ever heard in my school counseling career. I will never forget the expression on her face and having to make phone calls to local authorities to help us handle the situation. And as I sat there looking at this student who was drowning in the circumstances of a reality she could not escape. I had seen them before, I had data on them, but I'd failed them, because one or two minutes isn't relationship building, it's relationship performance.

Speaker 1: 13:29

And later that afternoon I just sat and stared at all of my use of time data and my minute meeting spreadsheet results, all of those color-coded cells, all that beautiful data, and I asked myself a question that changed a lot about how I saw myself as a school counselor Am I measuring what matters or just what's easy to measure? That question, years ago, planted a seed that took a while to fully grow, I'll admit, because even after I stopped doing minute meetings myself, I continued to see them as a reasonable option when school counselors asked for advice. They weren't ideal, but they seemed harmless, until I decided to really dig into the research on minute meetings for this episode, and I was actually planning to give them a little bit more of a balanced critique. I wanted to acknowledge the problems but also accept them as a decent starting point for counselors who are overwhelmed. But what I found or rather didn't find changed everything. Even that dramatic day years ago in my school counseling office wasn't enough to completely shift my thinking, but I did change it in a hot second when I realized that there is a complete absence of research supporting minute meetings, and everything that minute meetings claim to accomplish can be done better through systematic campus data analysis. Y'all. Here's what I've realized School counselors gravitate toward minute meetings because they feel manageable.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Pulling kids in for one or two minute conversations feels doable when you feel like your hair is on fire every day and people are evaluating you through a magnifying glass. But diving into attendance patterns and discipline, referrals and grade distributions and student survey data feels intimidating. Here is the truth. If you can get past the initial intimidation of a real campus data dig, your school will be transformationally better for it and, instead of collecting shallow responses from everybody, you're going to be able to identify actual patterns, real needs and systematic gaps that impact student outcomes. That realization led me to do some math and when you hear these numbers, you're going to understand why I am so concerned.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Let's talk about what minute meetings really cost us, because the math is brutal 500 students times two minutes equals 16 hours at a minimum. But then we have to factor in other things Transitions, walking to classrooms waiting for teachers to send students out, walking to classrooms waiting for teachers to send students out, relationship attempts because you can't just jump into personal questions without some sort of warmth or who you are Then factor in crisis disclosures that you can't just cut off when the timer goes off, on top of all of the other baloney lunch duties and morning duties and class coverage and meetings and all the other things you have going on. In my estimation you're looking at nearly a month of school counseling time. But that's not even the real cost. What about opportunity cost? Because every hour spent on minute meetings is an hour not spent training teachers to recognize depression, not spent with the student who's cutting, or the kid whose parents are divorcing, or the teenager contemplating whether their life is still worth living. We are stealing from students who desperately need our expertise to feed a practice that makes us feel productive.

Speaker 1: 17:33

And if that's not concerning enough, there are also legal issues we need to discuss. You may not realize it because some of this is fairly new, but minute meetings might violate student privacy laws in your state. New legislation in states like my home state of Texas and in Florida restrict counselor-initiated conversations about personal topics without parental consent. So if you're still doing universal minute meetings asking about home life or feelings, you could be putting yourself in legal jeopardy. Texas Family Code Section 32.004 limits when counselors can initiate counseling conversations without parental consent. We can only do so in specific circumstances suspected abuse, suicide risk or substance dependency.

Speaker 1: 18:31

Florida's Chapter 1014 Parents' Bill of Rights establishes parental authority over children's mental health decisions. Virginia requires written parental consent or opt-out procedures for personal or social counseling under 8VAC 20-620-10. And Ohio's House Bill 8, passed in December of 2024, now requires schools to notify parents of any counseling services provided to students. The landscape is shifting toward greater parental involvement in student mental health conversations, making universal minute meetings increasingly problematic. But beyond those legal risks, there's also ethical concerns, because when we mandate disclosure from students who don't want or need our intervention, we're not providing support. We're conducting surveillance. And for students who've experienced trauma, being forced to answer personal questions from an authority figure can be re-traumatizing, not healing. So what do we do? Instead, let's talk about the alternatives to the minute meeting. Approach to the minute meeting approach.

Speaker 1: 19:52

Imagine a school counselor named Mrs Martinez. Three years ago, she completely transformed her program and, instead of minute meetings, she implemented teacher consultation. She trains teachers to recognize warning signs through structured observation, instead of collecting fine and good responses. She built a referral system that catches kids before they hit crisis. As a result, her campus identifies at-risk students earlier and more accurately. She can provide targeted intervention to kids who actually need it, and she has the time, the actual time, to build deep relationships with students who are experiencing crisis. Teachers approach her about students showing concerning signs and the teachers recognize those signs because of the training the school counselor is providing. Then students are connected with intensive counseling, supports or family resources or referrals or whatever it is that they need. It's the difference between being busy and being effective. It's evidence-based, equity-minded and life-changing for students.

Speaker 1: 21:19

Now I know, as you're listening, you may be pushing back a little bit, and I want to address some of the things you may be thinking about, because your concerns are real and they do matter. What about this one? I hear this one a lot and I even said this myself. Maybe my minute meeting planted a seed for a kid. Maybe they knew they could come to me because of that contact. And you're right, prevention is important, but there's a difference between relationship building and relationship performing. Real prevention happens through your Tier 1 programming, where everyone's learning coping skills, or through training teachers to recognize warning signs, or creating a school culture where seeking help is normalized. These approaches actually prevent problems instead of just documenting that we asked about them.

Speaker 1: 22:22

Okay, so what about implementation? Maybe you're thinking teacher training needs time that I don't have. Check-in check-out is a level of coordination that's just not possible with what I've been tasked with on my campus. So minute meetings might not be perfect, but they're doable and at least they're something. So in that situation I would suggest starting small. Pick one evidence-based practice and implement it well, rather than doing minute meetings poorly. Maybe you teach five teachers how to use a structured observation. Maybe it's implementing check-in check-out with three appropriate students instead of minute meetings with 300.

Speaker 1: 23:07

Let's make our efforts and our time count, because once administrators start seeing results from those small starts, they often find resources they swore they didn't have for you. And then I also hear people say that their students tell them that these minute meeting check-ins are almost some of the only times that adults ask how they're doing are almost some of the only times that adults ask how they're doing. If your minute meeting is the only caring adult contact the student has, then we have a much bigger problem on your campus and the minute meetings are just masking it. In that case, you need teachers trained to build relationships. You should be creating mentorship programs and establishing a school culture where every adult is attuned to students' well-being.

Speaker 1: 23:57

Band-aids don't heal broken bones, and I'm not saying that kind of change is easy and that there aren't real barriers to implementation, but I am saying that hard doesn't mean it's impossible and the cost of not changing the cost to our students and our profession and our own integrity is too high to not make the jump. So what do we do instead? Let's build a roadmap for your path forward. Let's build a roadmap for your path forward. First, we have to let go of believing that every student needs individual counseling. Contact my friend, some kids are thriving. They have strong support systems, good coping skills and healthy relationships, and our job isn't to manufacture problems where none currently exist, like it seems we attempt to do in minute meetings. It's to be available when students need us.

Speaker 1: 25:08

Secondly, we need to embrace the power of systems, especially with campus sizes like we're all running these days. Instead of individual check-ins with everyone, we need to build robust referral systems. We need to train teachers to recognize warning signs and help them create classroom environments where students feel safe seeking help. And then, when we find those students who do need more intensive supports, we are able to give them what they actually need Evidence-based interventions, check-in, check-out, trauma-informed group counseling, family consultation, genuine relationships and referrals to outside resources. And the beautiful thing is, when you stop trying to reach everyone, you finally have time to help someone. If you are ready to move beyond minute meetings but you feel intimidated by that campus data dig I mentioned. That's exactly what I help school counselors do inside of my data discussions cohort in my School for School Counselors mastermind, because once you see what that real data analysis can reveal about your students' needs, you'll never want to go back to collecting good, good, fine and excellent responses.

Speaker 1: 26:24

This isn't about a massive school counseling program overhaul. Just take one small step toward more evidence-based practice that has the potential to actually change outcomes. And speaking of creating change, let me tell you what happened to Maria. Remember her at the beginning of the episode the counselor whose student where everything was fine, ended up being hospitalized. Six months after that crisis, maria completely restructured the way she was approaching student connection. She got rid of the minute meetings and she implemented teacher consultation. She started using that minute meeting time to deliver Tier 1 in classrooms. She trained teachers to recognize warning signs and then later a teacher approached her about a student that was showing concerning signs. They recognized the signs because of the training Maria provided and that student was connected with intensive counseling supports before they reached crisis level. That didn't happen because Maria saw that student for 90 seconds, but because she built a system that was able to truly see the student. That's the power of choosing impact over activity, depth over documentation and relationships over record keeping.

Speaker 1: 27:55

So what is my final grade for minute meetings? I've talked up down and around them and I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I'm going to give minute meetings a D. They get points for good intentions and maybe reducing stigma around seeing the school counselor, but they lose points for everything else. They have a weak evidence base, the opportunity costs are tremendous, there are potential legal and ethical risks and a fundamental misunderstanding of what equity actually means. But more than that, they get a D because, quite frankly, they represent everything wrong with school counseling's relationship to evidence, because we've chosen what feels good over what works and we've chosen what looks good over what we know actually helps. And, my friend, our students deserve better.

Speaker 1: 28:56

So as we wrap up, here's one final thought. The next time you see a school counselor posting about their minute meetings with pride, don't judge them. They're trying their best to do right by kids with the best information that they have. But now you have better information, you know there's a gap between what makes us feel productive and what actually produces results. So the question becomes now that you know better, will you do better? I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In my next episode I'm going to be talking about confidentiality and there's going to be some stuff in there that's going to kind of twist your brain a little bit. So keep listening and I'll be back soon. Until then, I hope you have the best day. Take care.