5 Things to Do NOW to Feel Prepared for Your School Counseling Year
5 Things to Do NOW to Feel Prepared for Your School Counseling Year
When the store aisles start to smell like pencils and crayons, we get so excited! And like Pavlov’s dog, we start planning our school counseling program. In this post (and corresponding podcast) we are sharing 5 (of many) tips that you can do now to feel prepared for your school counseling year!
We use three guiding questions to help us feel prepared for the school counseling year. Those questions are: Am I using my time effectively? Am I positioning myself as a leader? And Am I being successful? As you read these sections, ask yourself how each tip answers those questions.
Tip #1: Use Awareness Dates to Feel Prepared for Your School Counseling Year
If you listen to our podcast or you’ve heard us speak, you know that we don’t plan our year until we get our needs assessment data. So the first tip we’re giving you is to plan your yearly calendar according to events at your school and the ASCA awareness dates. September is National Attendance Month. October is Bullying Prevention Month, etc. Grab a calendar template and start filling in possible guest speakers, lessons, events, etc.
Tip #2: Make a Brochure
The second thing we recommend doing is make a brochure. We do a whole training on branding and promoting your school counseling program. Creating a brochure is one small part of that training. A brochure is great to put in the hands of your stakeholders to let them know about all of the great things you are doing. Think about giving one to everyone on your advisory council in addition to the advisory council agenda. Having a professional looking brochure shows that you are a leader!
Tip #3: Feel Prepared for Your School Counseling Year by Meeting With Your Administrator
Tip #3 is to meet with your administrator. We’re not talking about the annual administrator conference that you need to do as directed by ASCA. This is what we like to call “The Interview Before the Interview.” We like to go in and talk with our principal about his or her goals for the year. We have really thought about this, and we can’t think of a single goal that a principal would have that we couldn’t contribute to in some way. So once we get on the same page with our principal, we can then come back with a SMART goal for our counseling program that matches his or her school-wide goal. How impressive is that?! Plus, the interview before the interview is a great time to plant a seed that you would like to participate in various professional development opportunities, lead a book study, share at a faculty meeting, etc.
Tip #4: Re-Evaluate Your Advisory Council
Tip #4: We mentioned the advisory council in Tip #2. Now we’re going to dive in a little deeper. We believe that the advisory council is the best kept secret of the school counseling world. Now, if you are guilty of running through the school and getting random teachers and parents to sign your advisory council sign-in page, we’ve been there! But when we started making our advisory council serve a purpose, it changed everything! Challenge yourself to have more business leaders and community members on your advisory council than teachers. Don’t let this intimidate you. In our experience, business leaders and community leaders are eager to get involved. Think of something you need for your school. For example, last year I told my advisory council that I would like to have a washer and dryer at my school. They immediately started brainstorming ways to make it happen. We have also had them completely head up a career fair. They were also instrumental in a recent community outreach program providing school supplies, haircuts, shoes, and food for families. Guess what, when your advisory council heads up these programs, your school counseling program shines brighter! That’s your influence!
Tip #5: Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
We know that soon after the year starts, the avalanche of paperwork, counseling sessions, building test coordinator responsibilities, 504s, etc. will begin. That’s why we suggest planning in advance how you will step out of your comfort zone this year. Have you wanted to incorporate centers each year? Plan to try it! Do you want to do a room transformation? Plan to try it! Have you wanted to do minute meetings, but time gets away from you? Go ahead and mark off a week or 2, talk with your administrator, set expectations and try it! When we don’t plan for these things, we fall back into what’s comfortable. Stretch yourself a little this year and a little more next year. Then let us know how it goes! We totally believe in you!
These 5 tips are just a very small portion of what we share in our self-paced independent course, The First 20 Days. As we always say- whether it’s your first year or your 21st year, we believe this course will help guide your year and take your school counseling program to the next level. Check it out here!
