60. Your School Counseling Questions Answered

Carol: You're listening to the Counselor Chat podcast, a show for school counselors looking for easy to implement strategies, how to tips, collaboration, and a little spark of joy. I'm Carol Miller, your host. I'm a full time school counselor and the face behind counseling essentials. I'm all about creating simplified systems, data driven practices, and using creative approaches to engage students. If you're looking for a little inspiration to help you make a big impact on student growth and success, you're in the right place because we're better together. Ready to chat? Let's dive in.

I am so excited. The 2024 summer Counselor Conference registration page is open, so consider this your official invitation to join us this summer. The conference happens on July 26 through 28th. This virtual conference offers over 40 sessions and two amazing keynote sessions, and the sessions cover topics so helpful to school counselors, including sessions on group and individual counseling, organization, working with students with ADhd or anxiety, grief, autism, data collection, and so much more. All sessions are pre recorded and available for viewing until June 2025. We also have live q and a speaker pannels, networking events, tons of free resources, and the opportunity to earn three graduate credits through the University of the Pacific. If you are looking for relevant pd that's super affordable, this is it. So why don't you join us? Just go to www.summercounselorconference.com to register. We'll see you inside the conference.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Counselor Chat. Today I thought we would just take a look at some of the questions that I have received recently, and I'm just going to answer them. So we're going to do a little q and a of school counseling. All right, so let's just dive right in. The first question that I was asked was, I had an interview coming up soon. What are your best interview tips? And I think the best advice that I can give you if you're going for an interview is to really, you want to just try to be relaxed, wear dressy clothes, but also make sure that you're comfortable. Because there's nothing like sitting in an interview where you're wearing clothes that are maybe too tight or don't fit properly and that you fidget with a lot. It just makes you look uncomfortable and it can also take away from your confidence. So make sure that you are wearing clothes that you feel confident in and comfortable in. It's also really important as we're talking about clothing, to make sure that you try those on ahead of time. Don't wait until the day of the interview or the day before, because if they don't fit right or there's something wrong or maybe you haven't worn that shirt in a while and you look at it, you're like, oh, there's a big stain on that. You want to also have enough time to get yourself to the store and get what you need. I remember going on an interview a few years back, and I thought I was all ready and prepared except for my shoes. And then I realized I didn't have shoes to match the outfit that I wanted to wear. And it became this whole production of me trying to run out to the store and find a pair of shoes that matched and fit, which was quite difficult the day before. And I must have went to, like, a million shoe stores. So don't let that be you. Make sure that you have your whole outfit set. Besides from the clothing, I think it's also important to be prepared with some answers that you want to give. You know, I think people are going to ask you pretty much three basic questions in addition to some others that they have. One is always going to be, tell us about yourself and give us some background experience. Why do you want to work at our school? Those questions are probably the first ones that you are going to hear. And so if you want to start that interview well, you really have to be prepared with an answer for those very basic questions. The last question that you're probably going to hear, which we'll tie it all together, do you have any questions for us? So if you have the answers for those prepared, you are going to start the interview well and you're going to finish it strong. So really be prepared with tell us about yourself. Why do you want to work here and what questions do you have for us? You also want to be able to think of maybe a couple kids that you really worked with, that you can use those experiences as a response to a question that you might hear. So if you maybe worked with a student that was maybe challenging for a lot of teachers to work with, or a situation that really involved thinking outside of the box, or maybe even something that you regretted and that looking back now, you know that you would do things differently, I think those are all good stories to be able to share, and you can usually find a way to weave those stories into a question that is asked of you. So I know that people love to hear stories. And so if an interview team is able to have you think back and reflect and to make a connection with an experience that you had with the question that they're asking, it's really great. One way to look at some of those questions is to go on to the Aska website and just look at the interview questions that they have and start thinking, what kid can I kind of describe? Without, of course, saying their name or really any identifying information, but the background, the knowledge that what you learn from working in that situation, those will be really great things to, of course, add to your interview. And last but not least, make sure you smile, because wearing a smile is also wearing confidence. And you really want to make sure that you are the person that they think, wow, this is a friendly person, outgoing, confident, and they're wearing a smile. So they really want to be here or they really like kids or they're really approachable. You want them to be able to say that about you. So I hope that answers your question really quickly of what you should do if you have an interview coming up. All right, let's move on to another question. And it was, if you're in the specials rotation, how do you have time to meet in small groups? And I think this is going to really depend on your overall schedule. I know at one point in time I was in the specials rotation, but I didn't have every single grade level. I only had several. And so I was in just two, maybe three classes a day. And because of that, I was able to fit in all the other things. Besides, I think it really depends on really how many periods of time you have in the week and how many periods of time you are filling with classroom lessons. If you count it all out and you say, okay, if I count out half hour blocks and we have, you know, 6 hours of core instructional time during the day, and I'm meeting, you know, 15 times a week in classrooms, you definitely have some other times in there to meet with kids. And so you have to really balance that out. What I suggest is to really sketch out your time schedule for the week. Put down when those classes are, look at the free periods. Always have a couple. What I like to say is white spaces in your schedule and then build in those other things, build in your groups or your individual sessions, because you have to have a balance in there. So knowing what your overall week can look like and how busy you are can definitely determine when you have time to meet in small groups. The next question that came in is, are we allowed to be in an IEP for school counseling? And this is always a really controversial question when I see it in any of the Facebook groups because there are such a wide range of answers now, ASCA will recommend that counselors aren't scheduled for long term counseling. Many counselors will argue that you can't be in an IEP for school counseling because it's a binding document, and if you don't meet those hours, then you're out of compliance. However, idea, which is a federal law, really, and that's the law that really governs special ed, it indicates that school counselors are competent providers of counseling services in the IEP. So legally, yes, we can provide IEP counseling. I have to admit I am a provider of counseling services for ieps in my school. However, the number of students that I have or I see for individual counseling fit in one hand. I mean, I have less than a half dozen of these students, so I can actually fit them into my schedule. If you have 15 2025 30 IEP counseling students, there is no way that you can do that. And then you should really advocate that those students are picked up by a provider that is maybe a social worker who deals specifically with tier two and tier three students, that their caseloads should be somewhat smaller than ours because they're working with, in the tiered approach, a smaller number of kids, even though they might be for the whole school, their ideal caseload is actually smaller because they're working more intensely, whereas the school counselor, we work with everyone, so we have to be available. But I think if you schedule it right, and that goes back to the last question of how do we fit groups into our schedule if we're on the specials rotation? You really have to see the overall picture of what your daily and weekly schedule looks like. It is possible to include IEP counseling, but we have to be very cautious that we aren't put in for every student because not every single student needs it. But it is something that we have to provide if it is, so be a part of those meetings, attend those meetings. And it's also okay to say, hey, I'm going to see this kid for school counseling. But you know what? They haven't made it through all the tiers yet. And maybe they need to go back to a tier two where I can see them for a short amount of time, and let's see if it makes a difference. So we don't want to really jump the gun with individual counseling either, because just like special ed classes, counseling really involves having that least restricted environment as well. And of course, providing counseling services like classroom lessons to the whole school is the least restrictive. So we really want to make people aware of that as well. Okay, let's move on a little bit. Because there's a couple more questions to answer. This is always a fun one. What are some fun games you play during lunch bunch? There are a ton and I have worked at all three levels and when I was at the high school level, I had a lot of students that loved the ungame. It was quite popular and we played it a lot. So the ungame in middle school, I didn't have the board game on game, but I used the cards a lot and we asked a lot of those ungame questions. But in terms of games, you know, kids really like anything. Uno is always popular as well as Jenga Mankala are some fun ones. Just writing questions on popsicle sticks is fun. Apples to apples. I would suggest not using the adult version unless you actually go through and pull out cards before your first play because some of them really aren't school appropriate, but they do have a kid's version. Apples to apples is a great one. And at the elementary level, you know, if you just want to have kids practice, you know, their social skills with games, pop up pirates is super popular. Don't break the ice. Even perfection, kids love perfection. Those are great games. I will say if you work at the elementary level, you might want to hide some of your games sometimes. Because right now we are on a pop up pirate band. Like, I have had it with pop up pirates, even though it's a fan favorite, and we are rotating that out right now. So right now we are playing a lot of candy land and shoots and ladders. And those are pretty fun. And I just couple it with questions that are really designed around school counseling, whatever topic that we're dealing with, whether it's maybe I have kids that are struggling with anger or impulse control or friendship issues, and I have these questions and in fact, I can actually link in the show notes the questions that I use so that you can see what I do. I also have a lot of games that I made then. They're very similar to Uno. They play pretty closely to it, but they have questions on it for certain topics, whether it's like the anger or hope and resiliency or impulse control or coping skills. So I can link those up as well, because those we play all the time in my room, as well as just some regular, I like to call them feeling cards. They're just regular. It's a card deck, but they have feelings on them. And we play things like War and Rummy and things like that, but we use those cards to really answer a lot of questions. So I think as long as you take your games and you tie it in to an overall topic that you want to discuss. You can really use any game that's out there, and so many games are fun. I think if you enjoy playing a game, that's the game that you want to bring into your counseling program. The next question that came in was, favorite counseling planner. And my friends, I might be a little bit biased on this, but I want to say I have been making counselor planners for a really long time and I've actually been selling them for about ten years. I think I was probably one of the first counselors online to put out a counselor planner. And we have really sold them to thousands and thousands of counselors. And every year we get people who come back saying, this is the best counselor planner that I have ever used because I really put a lot of thought into what do counselors need? And so in our planner, we have our goal setting section. So what are our school program goals, our personal goals, some lesson plan planners. We have everything. So if you want to follow the ask a national model, we have it all in the front section of the planner. It's then followed by a monthly planner. And then we go into the weekly. And in the weekly, I kind of have it set up so that when you open up the planner, try to give you a visualization. On the left hand side of this planner that's opened up is a page of things that we need to get done during the week, kids that we need to see, things that we need to do, phone calls that we have to make, lesson plans that we have to prep or copy or whatever. And on the other side, we have our actual calendar. It's every 15 minutes and it goes from the morning till the afternoon. And it's in there. And on the very bottom of that calendar, with the time increments, there's a little section on there so that you can actually tally up how. What kind of time is this? Is it indirect? Is it direct student support? And so that you can really see where your time is spent. We also have events to document. So something important came up. You can document it in your planner or student visits or your contact information or phone calls or emails that you sent out. So everything is nice and tidy as well as a place for passwords because, you know, you have to have really, we use, I think, a lot of websites. And so having unique login and having a password that's unique to each site is really important. So there's a place for that as well as a section for notes. So if you're bringing it to a faculty meeting or whatever, and you need to doodle or whatever. But I do think it is an awesome planner. We sell them on Etsy. They come professionally printed, unbound with this almost. I would say it's a pretty indestructible laminated cover. You can pick your cover, put your name on it. We put your title or whatever else that you want on there, and we get them printed, laminated boundaries. There's a. In the back, there is a pocket for all your notes. And we have tabs for each section that are also laminated so that they're pretty indestructible. So it's a great. It's a great planner. It really is a great planner. So I'll pop the link in that and then you can check it out as well. And then last but not least, the question that came in is how do you decide what to teach and when? And I think this goes back to knowing your counseling program. Like, knowing what does the data say? What am I trying to do with my program? What kind of goals have I set up? What are the school goals that we have for this year? Because you want to really have your program designed to meet the needs of your school building. So if your school building is really having a huge problem with friendships or empathy, you want to really focus on friendships and empathy. You probably also want to talk about problem solving and conflict resolution and bullying, but you want to work that all into your program and make sure that you're hitting that. And that's probably more important than maybe a school that's focusing in on character traits like honesty and integrity and perseverance, because it's going back to what do. What do my students really, really need? You know? Or you probably know by now that we have the Perks Counseling content club. And in the perks, one of the things that we do that I think is pretty different than the other counseling memberships that are out there is, is that we don't put out a monthly calendar of lessons to subscribe to. We have scope and sequences, so we take topics that counselors could use and we kind of show what you would do in kindergarten. And we build lessons from kindergarten all the way through to 8th grade. And we have this for every topic so that you can go through and you kind of pick and choose, what does my school really need based on what's going on in my building? And I think that's really important. You have to really build your program according to what you need. So if you can do that, my friends, you are golden. Anyway, I hope this little Q and a session was helpful. I'm really excited to see if you guys have any other questions that you want to ask, because I just love answering them. If you have your own thoughts or whatever, go on to Facebook, join in these conversations. Because a lot of these conversations are happening in our Facebook groups. So go on there. Last but not least, friends. Today is the first day of registration for our summer counselor conference, and I am so, so, so excited for the conference. This year we have 40 speakers, plus two keynote presenters, so basically 42 sessions, and they're amazing. I have been working on the conference now for a couple months and working with our presenters and speakers, and the sessions that they have are truly. They're awesome. I mean, there's so many to choose from, whether it's adhd or anxiety or students with autism. I'm doing a session on. Oh, my gosh, what's my session? I'm doing a session on community circles. We have ones on individual sessions and group counseling, behavior modifications, all different kinds of stuff. And it doesn't matter if you're in in kindergarten, work with kindergarteners or with 12th graders. We have something for everyone. And we did a really great job this year of really trying to balance out all the different grade levels so that there really is something for everybody. Anyway, I'm going to be dropping the link for that in the show notes as well, because it's time to get registered, and we hope to see you there. Anyway, my friends, until next time, I hope you have a really great week. Thanks for listening to today's episode of Counselor chat. All of the links I talked about can be found in the show notes and@counselingessentials.org podcast. Be sure to hit, follow, or subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you would be so kind to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it. Want to connect? Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at counseling essentials until next time. Can't wait till we chat. Bye for now.