School Counseling Hacks

This summer we presented to a full house at the ASCA Summer Conference in Austin, TX. We shared some of our own school counseling hacks, along with some we crowdsourced from our Instagram page. The topic was so successful, we were asked to record a podcast on the same topic. We believed a blog post might be helpful too! These hacks are on a variety of topics that we believe will help you use your time effectively, position you as a leader, and make you successful as a school counselor.

And before we get too far into this, you may want to check out this video. We asked leading school counselors across the nation for their favorite school counseling hacks. Here’s what they had to say.

Desk-Top Hack#1: Mini Shredder

This school counseling hacks post is all about the things that could be on your desk that you use every day. The first one that we absolutely had to talk about was our desktop shredder! Of course this could be used for shredding documents, but we don’t believe that’s the most efficient use of this tool. Our mini shredder is used to shred various issues our students are working to overcome. For example, I have had students who have worries that they admit are not healthy and not likely to come to pass. In those cases, we come up with a way to combat the worries, and then we roll the worries through the shredder!

I believe there is an element of catharsis that students get from manually shredding their worries. You could also use this to help students break the power of negative comments people have made about them. How could you use a desktop shredder? Just so you know, some of these links will take you to our Amazon account. If you order from the link, we make a few cents. If you don’t, that’s ok, too!

Desk-Top School Counseling Hacks #2: Laminator

Have you ever had to wait in line or stay after school to use the laminator? Then, once it’s your turn you realize there’s a short in the wiring. So you have to knock it to the left and lift up on it to get it to work? All of that can be eliminated by getting yourself a laminator! I have cut back on paper usage by printing my graphic organizers or activities on cardstock, laminating them, and then reusing them for each class. This laminator allows you to choose the thickness, which is perfect for reusing printed materials!

Desk-Top Hack #3: Label Maker

I know you may be envisioning one of those label makers that prints out labels that fall off of everything. Any Seinfeld fans? Remember the Label Baby Jr? It’s all I can think of when I say label maker. This label maker is definitely an upgrade from what it used to be. This little thing will connect via Bluetooth to your device. This means you can print quickly after you design a label on your device.

I remember a painful process from a few years ago where I was trying to print labels, couldn’t get them the right size, couldn’t find sticky labels, so I printed them, cut them, and taped them onto my folders. It was grueling. Now that we know about this label maker, we will be labeling everything! Our kids, our pets, everything!

Desk-Top School Counseling Hack #4: Our Planner

It is rare that you will find us without our school counseling planner within 5 feet of us. It contains the brains and the guts of our school counseling program. There are planners made by school counselors for school counselors; however, this year we just ordered The Happy Planner from Amazon. We made sure it was disc-bound instead of spiral-bound. Using this specialized hole punch, we are able to add any important paperwork or notifications we get from meetings. In the past once I printed the pages and took my planner to Staples to be bound, that was it. If I left anything out, it was just tough luck! The specialized hole punch, while pricier than a regular hole punch, it has come in so handy!

Desk-Top School Counseling Hack #5: Computer Desktop Organizer

Does your computer desktop ever get cluttered with folders and documents that you’ll organize when you get around to it? Ours too. We created this background for our desktop to help cut down on some of the clutter. We saved it as the background on our computer, then we could drag folders and documents into sections. You could also use a graphic like this based on the Eisenhower Matrix where you divide your sections into variations of urgent and important. We believe this will keep documents from getting lost or forgotten about.

If you still need more school counseling hacks, check out this printable from our podcast episode with Tanya Kirschman. Keep checking in for more school counseling hacks! Let us know your favorite school counseling hacks in the comments! You may just end up in our next episode!