National School Counseling Week Inspiration
February 3-7th is National School Counseling Week!! As school counselors across the state, and country, are being cut as funding dwindles; it makes sense to be proactive. We must educate about and advocate for our careers, the importance of what we do and the impact we have on student achievement. School counselors are vital components of student’s academic, career, social and emotional development.
This is my first year in my district where I am part time elementary and part time middle school counselor. To celebrate National School Counseling Week, I tweaked the ASCA press release for our district newsletter; informing all stakeholders in the school and community about who the district counselors are and what we do. For staff and administration I am putting together a daily “info –treat” ! We are running announcements on our closed circuit tvs at the middle school, making announcements at the elementary and I can’t wait to use some great ideas I found searching on line.
Here is what I did this year for National School Counseling Week. In keeping with a theme, I chose a candy a day “How Sweet it is…”.
For each day, I have something small planned. To kick off the week, I am using Dove chocolates (because every wrapper has a little inspirational phrase). My purpose here is to let teachers know how valuable they are to me. We work as a team. http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/#sthash.XZq85URe.dpuf Teachers really are often times a counselors front line and deserve that recognition.
The second treat is licorice. Our local news channel is WNDU and they have archived stories on what they call “the big red bar”. The “big red bar” featured a recent three part series…http://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/Growing-student-to-counselor-ratios-in-Michigan-and-Indiana–242497551.html “According to the most recent data from the American Counseling Association Indiana and Michigan are ranked 44th and 46th in the country for their student-to-counselor ratios. After years of tight school budgets and staffing cuts, some area counselors are feeling stretched as their workloads continue to increase.”
http://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/Guidance-Counselor-Crisis-Students–mental-health-242501441.html “Although 1 in 10 children and adolescents suffer from mental illness severe enough to cause some level of impairment, in any given year fewer than 1 in 3 of these children receives needed treatment, according to the Surgeon General.
For many students, school counselors are the most fundamental access to mental health treatment in the form of a listener.”
http://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/Guidance-Counselor-Crisis–242819241.html “Lower student to counselor ratios at schools do not just mean more attention for each student. In some cases it means better test scores in math and reading”
This last segment really leads in to another little gem about how Social and Emotional Learning is connected to the Common Core. I summed up the article and used the Reese’s to say -Thank you for checking out some “Pieces” of this article!! The entire article can be found at…http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-common-core-social-emotional-learning-connected-maurice%20elias
So how do the 100 Grand fit in? Well, I summed up the answer to this question “What’s the difference between a guidance counselor and school counselor?” and just gave a little over view from http://sccounselor.blogspot.com/2011/10/school-counselor-yes-vs-guidance.html and ended with a simple “Thanks a 100 Grand” for all we do together to help kids.
I look forward to becoming even more proactive and creative next year.
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