Meet the Counselor

I have been doing the same lesson off and on for the past few years.  I love the book, Ms. Joyce Gives the Best High Fives, but I don’t want the students to get tired of it.  In one of those collaborating meetings we just talked about in our last post, we came up with a lesson comparing the role of the counselor to one of the trendiest items out there: a cactus!  You may be asking yourself, “What in the world could a succulent have in common with a counselor?”  Well, this lesson perfectly outlines it for you, complete with the ASCA mindsets and behaviors this lesson satisfies.  But let’s review a couple of my favorite points here:

 There are many different types of cacti.  Just like there are many different types of cacti, the school counselor does many different jobs within a school to help the students.

On another slide we talk about how prickly a cactus’s spines are.  That leads in perfectly to the slide where we discuss how counselors can help with “sticky” situations.  It seems like our students are carrying more and more big issues around with them.  Most could definitely benefit from speaking with a counselor.

We help our students bloom!  This is one of my favorite parts of the job.  Don’t you feel as though counselors have a gift to see in others what they can’t see themselves?  Yeah, me too.  We help students bloom by recognizing when they are kind or by helping them become more organized.  Since we are our own worst critics, I love the thought of these kids having us as their cheerleaders!

We also explain how counselors keep confidentiality and meet the requirements of program delivery.  I have also found that a great pretest/posttest can help with perception data to prove that the students are grasping what you are teaching them.  We have to be the biggest advocates of our own program, and pretest and posttests make that easy!  What are your favorite ways to introduce the role of the counselor each year?