First 30 Days: Part II

*Image from girlwifemom.com

Congratulations! Many of you just finished your first week of workdays (give or take) and probably have one or more of the following feelings as the first day with students approaches:  Overwhelmed, excited, nervous, exhausted, relieved. I have experienced each of these feelings at varying times this week as I transition to a new school.  If you read my First 30 Days post, I started an outline of steps you can take to establish a strong foundation for your school counseling program this year, sharing tips on visibility within the school and general organization.  The response to that post was amazing with over 1200 people reading it in 3 days; here's part II.

Data Collection and Management
If your true goal this year is to implement a comprehensive school counseling program, you MUST commit to using data.  School counseling without data is like a teacher starting instruction on day 1 without reviewing a cum folder, giving a pre-assessment, or looking at one piece of standardized testing information for that child. I have talked about data in previous posts here and here, among others. I also will be linking a great ASCA National Model presentation in the next section that includes a lot of data examples. Resistant?! Let me help you......

Argument #1: I don't know where to find it (or I don't have time)!  Schools collect data (some argue too much) ALL THE TIME! You need to find out who is collecting it and where it is stored. Talk to your principal, assistant principal, intervention teachers, data manager, secretary, social worker, school nurse, and school psychologist.  If data intimidates you, start with the easiest source first. For me, that would be attendance data because I can easily print it off of PowerSchool without having to bug anyone else, and it is easy to understand.  Other easy sources:
- A copy of last year's EOG scores
- A copy of last year's suspensions and/or timeouts/behavior referrals (depending on the state I would imagine suspensions almost ALWAYS have to be entered into a computer database/spreadsheet)
- Spreadsheet on any homeless students (McKinney-Vento information has to be collected by schools)
-RtI/MTSS data- who is on tier 2 and tier 3? Can you be working with any of those students to support academics or behavior? Read about making the most of MTSS here.

As for the NO time argument, I agree. Being a school counselor is busy with many of us wearing too many hats. However, if our time is spent on too many activities that are disconnected from the data-driven needs of our school, are we just spinning our wheels?!! Figure out how to prune to focus on what's most important.

Argument #2:  My administration doesn't share data with me.  Yes, I have been there. It's frustrating. My answer, make your own data. It might not be as comprehensive or as statistically valid as standardized data, but it is pertinent and representative of your school.  Start with a needs assessment for your staff.  Mine was sent out day 2 last week because I truly don't know the needs of my students as a new school counselor, and I needed a starting point. I sent a Google doc survey to all of the classroom teachers; it was short with only 6 questions/fields to complete.  By Friday, I had already received over half of the responses, which is great considering I am using a data source teachers are not used to and have not completed in the past.

I also tried something a little different this year and sent a needs assessment to my administrative team.  Administrators are privy to so much information and have a great "big picture" view of a school's strengths and areas of improvement. I am hoping to get a sense of their overall concerns for this school year so I can help address any areas that fall into the realm of school counseling.  We'll see how that goes.

You will also generate school counseling data in your intro lessons if you are giving a student needs assessment (I plan to do this with third and fifth grade students). As you explain your role as a school counselor, ask the following on your survey:
- Who are the new students (Immediate new student group data!)
- Who has friendship, family, or academic concerns? (Immediate individual counseling data!)
Provide your school counselor referral form to older students (I usually do 2nd-5th) so that you can continue individual referrals throughout the year.

All of these data sources will help drive your school counseling program organization (next section). You will still need to figure out how to store and maintain this data but think about the following:
- An individual counseling documentation sheet (right).  Here is an example that I use in individual sessions and another that I use for mediations. I then enter it into an online Google form so I can sort/analyze data throughout the year to see patterns with concerns.
 - Auto-populated spreadsheets from Google Forms with surveys you create.
- Excel spreadsheets with year-to-year comparisons of behavior referral/suspension numbers and EOG achievement percentiles

I could write 5 posts on data, but I hope the above information will give you a good start.

Program Organization

Last year I presented at the kick-off meeting in my previous county on the ASCA National Model. I don't think there is anything I could write here that would say things clearer than this presentation.  If you weren't trained in the ASCA National Model in grad school or still aren't sure where to start, dust off your Making Data Work or ASCA handbook and refresh your memory.  For these first 30 days I would focus on the following:

- A mission statement for your school counseling program.  My co-counselor and I worked on ours this week and it is already posted on my door, setting the tone for the year. Get ideas from last year's version here.

- An annual calendar based on district non-negotiables (e.g. bullying prevention in October), needs assessment data, other data collection sources from your school, the ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors, and NC Guidance Essential Standards.  That's a lot of data sources, but it should give you more than enough information to create an annual calendar that truly provides proactive student instruction and addresses the needs of your school!

- An annual agreement and professional development plan that outline your areas of responsibility and plans for growth this school year. You will review both of these documents with an administrator so make sure they include the student-centered, direct-service activities that will establish a strong school counseling program in the school.

- Action plans based on concerns or areas of growth you saw when collecting data.  Examples: Plans focused on improving student attendance, EOG scores, behavior referrals (lowering the number), or bullying incidents. If you aren't sure how to get started on the action plans, consider using these SMART goal worksheets for your goal development. I love them!

Identify Supports

I am lucky to have a co-counselor this year but many of you FEEL like you are on an island at your school, especially if you are new. Consider the following bridges that can help connect you to other islands or the mainland (do you like my Hawaii metaphor and the sneak peek of my office decor above?!).

- Create a student services PLC (school psychologist, social worker, school nurse, etc.) that you meet with on a regular basis to discuss students, resources, and schoolwide programs. I used to meet with my student services team every week in my first job, and it was so helpful as a newer school counselor. As a new school counselor to my current school, I can't wait to get started with this team!
- Connect with central office personnel who are in charge of school counseling in your district.  They want you to succeed...continual turn-over and hiring of staff isn't good for ANY STUDENT. Ask for help!
- Connect with your assigned county school counselor PLC.
- Utilize social media sources to get ideas for your program and ask questions.  The brilliant Carol Lawson Miller provided the best support for elementary and middle school counselors when she created the Elementary School Counselor Exchange and Caught in the Middle School Counselor groups on Facebook. It would have saved me a lot of sleepless nights had I had this resource 10 years ago! There is also a high school Facebook group, the new ASCA Scene and Twitter #scchat conversations happening on any given day.

OK, that was a lot of information!!! Feel free to email me at apoovey@hotmail.com if you have additional questions or check out one of the awesome collaboration resources I mentioned above to ask questions.  Chances are someone else has already asked a similar question and you can tap into the expertise of the people who know your job best, other school counselors!

I've also created this handy guide to help you stay on track these first 30 days. You can do it!

Enjoy and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela 

ASCA was SPICY!

It has been 12 days since the ASCA Conference wrapped up in Phoenix, and I am just now getting a chance to reflect about my top "spicy" moments during my days there (house hunting, family reunions, and Fourth of July vacations are time consuming!!).  Although nothing will probably ever live up to my first ASCA conference experience with #FLOTUS Michelle Obama's surprise appearance (reminisce with me here), there were some great moments to be had in the 112 degree Phoenix weather. Here are my top 5:

5.  Keynote by Tim Shriver:  From the moment Mr. Shriver walked on the stage, you could sense his passion for Special Olympics and his desire for all to create inclusive environments in school, sports, and beyond.  His keynote was particularly thought provoking for me because I started to think more about the self-contained classrooms I have interacted with at my different schools and the many additional interventions I could have done for those students with disabilities.  The highlight of this speech was when Mr. Shriver brought up a group of Special Olympics participants from Kellis High School in Arizona, and they taught us how to do their school dance, the Cougar Dance. All of the school counselors in the audience were encouraged to dance along with them "like no one was watching"  and boy did we!  We looked totally ridiculous, but it was such a touching moment to feel the students' enthusiasm and share it with them.  Check out the Go Pro video I took of our groove session for a laugh!

4.  Counseling with HeART session:  I love art and especially love getting new

ideas of how I can incorporate art into my individual and group counseling sessioons.  Julie Ford from Oregon did not disappoint! I walked away with about 25 new ideas of activities I can use with students.  My favorites, including one of my live tweets during her session, were:
*Using masks to help kids talk about feelings within or behind the mask.
*Creating vision boards to help kids with goal setting.
*Working on mandalas with students as part of relaxation exercises and concentration/focus activities.
*Allowing students to match colors to their feelings and then creating a heart drawing that represents what fraction of each feeling is inside them at any given time.

3.  Tweet Up with my Social Media Friends:  My social media friends were in full effect at the second annual "Tweet Up".  Susan Spellman Cann (@SSpellmanCann), Bridget Helms (@bridgethelms), JanD-M (@humbleofferings) and Carol Miller (@tmscounselor) did a fantastic job of organizing everything and incorporating tons of cute details at the meet up.  From passing out FB group buttons, creating a "Tweet Up" bingo game, taking inspirational quote pics, and snapping a group photo, it was a total blast!! Check out the collage I made of our activities.

Susan also made this great Storify project to capture our time together.

2.  "Full STEM Ahead" Conference Presentation:  I want to give a shout out to all the speakers at the conference who took a risk, put themselves out there to share knowledge with our counseling community, and spent part of their conference giving back to others.  It is a lot of extra work to present at the conference, but I love connecting with other counselors and hearing their feedback.  This year I focused on the STEM interventions I have done at my elementary the past two years.  From STEM Career Cafe speakers to Genius Hour to classroom lessons, it has been a blast exposing my students to the STEM careers of the future.  You can access my presentation handout here. Be sure to email me if you have any questions at apoovey@hotmail.com.  A few of my STEM resources are posted at my TPT store, and I hope to add a couple more over the next month (in-between moving..ha!).  Also, I am super excited to have a guest blogger for my next post who is going to share additional resources and another perspective on incorporating STEM with your students! Stay tuned.....

1.  RAMP Recognition Dinner: To my fellow ambitious RAMP seekers, hang in there; there is a light at the end of the tunnel. RAMP is a big undertaking, and it requires a lot of organization and time, especially if you are the only person at  your school working on it (I'm talking to you elementary counselors).  However, if once you earn the RAMP designation, it will be worth it. I cannot tell you how special I felt being dressed up, eating great food and drinking wine, and walking across that stage to pose for pictures and accept the RAMP award for my school.  It is a career highlight that I will always remember and appreciate, and I barely remember the HOURS of work that went into my portfolio at this point.  Keep working hard, you will get there!! I was also super proud to be with some of my fantastic former mentors, other NC awardees, and state board colleagues who truly make our profession great  (see pic below)!

I hope if any of my blog readers attended ASCA this summer you will also share a highlight you experienced at the conference in the comments section.  Also, a huge congratulations to Carey Hughes for being the book giveaway winner from my last post.  I even got to meet her in person at the conference before she was chosen randomly through my raffle app.  I hope you enjoy the book, Carey!!


Happy summer and happy counseling! ~Angela

#ASCA2015...Celebrating with a Book Giveaway!

     *Image from ASCA website

Let the countdown begin....in 3 short days I will be attending my second annual ASCA conference in the lovely, but HOT, Phoenix, AZ.  I'm super excited to be presenting "Full STEM Ahead- Supporting STEM Initiatives as a School Counselor" to share some of the STEM activities I have done the last two years at my elementary school.  It is sure to be a good time with lesson ideas, school-wide program examples, video clips, and DOOR PRIZES! After all, who doesn't love a good door prize?! If you are attending ASCA in person (or even virtually), stop by and see me on Tuesday from 11:15-12:30.  I would love to meet you in person!  I will also be live tweeting and posting pics to my Life on the Fly Facebook page throughout the conference. Send me a shout out to @apoovey.

To add to the upcoming excitement, I am doing a book giveaway from one of my fave school counselors, Mr. Kip Jones. I first met Mr. Jones at the 2014 NCSCA conference when I went to his seriously entertaining biblio-rhyming session.  I was thoroughly engaged by the creative videos, raps, and original books that he uses with his students. By the end of his session we were doing a conga line around the room because we were having so much fun learning! His newest book entitled The Power of Bystanders features his ever-popular main character, Willie Bohanon, teaching kids how to stand up to bullies like a B.O.S.S.  The B.O.S.S. acronym provides students with a powerful tool to be a bystander who is part of the solution.

What I love most about Mr. Jones' books is that they feature diverse characters and are written in a graphic novel or comic book-type format, which is popular among kids, especially boys.  The language is very informal and relatable to kids and raps or songs are always interspersed in the content.  It is truly a fun read!   If you want a chance to be my lucky winner, fill out the entry form below. You can enter up to three times by following me on Facebook/Twitter or tweeting about the giveaway.  One lucky reader will be chosen on Thursday, July 2, and I will mail you the book directly.
Good luck and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela
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Coffee with the Counselors: School Counseling PR

*Image from School Counselor Connection

Well, it is now October, and the image above might perfectly express how you are feeling now that the hustle and bustle of the year has really started.  Or, maybe you are still perfectly in control.  I saw a picture of a school counselor's desk the other day that made me laugh because it reminded me I need to clean my own! Between the pre/post surveys, DUKE TIP applications, lesson plans, behavior referrals, my own "to do" list, and small group permission slips, there is not a lot of empty space where I can work.  However, cleaning is low on my priority list when I think of all the other direct service activities I want to get done while kids are in the building.

Teachers are feeling the same way, so  I decided to try out an idea I had heard about from another school counselor this year- a meet and greet time with teachers to discuss student concerns.  My co-counselor, Nicole, and I  named our event "Coffee with the Counselors." It seemed like a great way to connect with my classroom teachers and get information on student referrals now that they have worked with their classes for over a month.  Nicole, made this lovely invitation...she's awesome!

We decided to have half of the grade levels come in the morning before school started since we were offering Dunkin' Doughnuts coffee, juice, water, and goodies to eat.  The other half of the grade levels have planning before lunch so we invited them for the first 20 minutes of their planning time (this invitation went to that group).

I set out a binder that had a page for each grade level so they (or I) could write down student names, concerns, and any other notes that would be helpful when discussing student referrals. It ended up being a pretty successful event, although the grade levels who came during planning had better attendance than those who were scheduled before school (we will schedule it on a different morning next year, NOT Monday!).  All of these positive interactions with staff help promote the school counseling program, and I will definitely try this again next year!

I have also been working on school counseling PR in other ways.  This past week, I presented to the elementary school principals about the ASCA National Model along with my fantastic school counselor colleague Amanda Allen.  It was a great experience, and we will do two more rounds as we present to middle school and high school principals over the next two weeks.  Also, I am scheduled to present my 2014-2015 school goals to my staff next Wednesday and have created a Prezi to organize my thoughts. You may remember I did the same thing last year and talked about it in my blog post here.

Finally, I have been helping to organize the school counselors in my PLC as we work on taking the next steps to RAMP and completing more ASCA paperwork this year.  We will be completing the annual calendar, Closing the Gap Action Plans, Smart Goal Worksheets, and Management Agreement as our minimum documentation for 2014-2015, and I could not be more excited!  We had a kick-off event for professional development, and I was able to present the following PowerPoint presentation to my colleagues. I also had the pleasure of presenting this same information to my Harnett County colleagues last week to promote the National Model.  I hope this presentation will be helpful to my blogger friends as well.  Make sure to check out the hyperlinks within the presentation to see how I collect some of my data and share it with my stakeholders throughout the year.  There are also links to the ASCA templates for National Model documentation.

                     Enjoy and  Happy Counseling! ~ Angela

GRIT...Get Ready, It's Time!

Has the honeymoon period worn off yet?! For some school counselors, last week was your first week of school.  Students eyes were bright and smiles were wide as they came in for that first day of school ready to conquer a new year (at least 99% of them).  For other school counselors, especially my year rounders, the honeymoon period is G.O.N.E.  Reality has set in and there is real work to be done with students, staff, and parents.

I'm about to start week 3 with students and am concentrating on being as proactive as possible so that when the bubbles burst (and they will), I am ready.  In my previous posts here and here I mentioned some of my "Introduction to the School Counselor" lessons.  I am still delivering SMART GOALS with my upper grade students to help them create a positive vision for themselves this year.














I added to my fourth and fifth Smartboard lessons (Here on TPT) and included this awesome YouTube video after I did my pre-test on the best definition for Perseverance and students' perceptions of their goals for the year.  Pretty engaging, right?!

I also am being proactive with my data collection.  Google Docs is truly my friend.  I have my individual counseling form ready to go and have used it already to begin this year's data collection process. You can access the form here to get a better idea of how it looks, and I discussed creating Google forms in my blog post here with character trait surveys. The process is the same for any form, you just change the type of question to the formats below. 

I was able to use the summary of response information at the end of last year to present a nice "School Counseling Data Summary At A Glance" with my staff.  You won't be able to click on all the links but check out the graphics.  I have Google Docs created for pre/post perception and outcome data on all of my classroom guidance lessons and small groups.  It does take some GRIT to stay on top of adding the data throughout the year, but the payoff is so worth it when I can show a quick presentation like this one to highlight my work when it's all said and done.




Most important, I have my ASCA National Model forms completed and ready to show my administrators in my management agreement meeting and in my first advisory council meeting. If you want to get started with the National Model forms, access some of the blank templates here.  The Smart Goals Worksheet is a phenomenal place to start once you have school data so that you narrow in on what your school NEEDS this year.  I also have a 5-page PDF example of my monthly annual calendar from last year with classroom lesson topics, small group topics, schoolwide/parent involvement events, character traits, and bulletin board ideas available on TPT here. All of the classroom lesson topics are cross-referenced with the ASCA indicators and Guidance Essential Standards (picture below) to give an idea of how you can create a comprehensive core curriculum plan throughout the year.

As the above YouTube video emphasizes, take it one step at a time.  It will take some GRIT, but you can do it a little at a time, adding another layer of data or another step of the National Model each year.            
                   Good Luck and Happy Counseling! ~ Angela