Helping Students Become

I read a lot of academic articles about school counseling in my current role as a doctoral student in counselor education. Recently I was reading an article that critiqued school counselors who unintentionally limited student options through college and career conversations just focused on jobs and "threaded with an anxiety about the future." Although I found most of the article to be missing an understanding of school counseling as a profession, I did like the author's vision for facilitating conversations about the future and postsecondary education.

Tieken (2016) suggested we "must ask not just What do you want to be? but also Who do you want to be? Where do you want to be? Why and how do you want to be? and, importantly, How can we support you?" (p. 220).

What powerful questions to guide all of us working with students and clients! I believe these questions are in the spirit of what we do as school counselors.

Adolescent Grief Resources

This past weekend I had the opportunity to spent two days with middle and high school teens at a children's bereavement camp. I served as a clinical group leader and planned activities and facilitated group sessions in the midst of ropes courses and arts and rappelling. It was a powerful weekend for seeing the resiliency and courage of kids who have experienced a significant death loss. In my planning, I found several resources to share with school counselors. 

Safe Crossing's Children's Grief Program has a guide specifically for school counselors that has been a go-to resource for me since finding it online years ago. This link takes you to the guide. 

The Behavioral & Emotional Grief Response Card Sort (pages 8-10 in the guide above) is a powerful activity that I have used in elementary settings with students 4th grade and up. I have students sort thoughts/feelings/behaviors they have and have not experienced since the death loss. For group processing with middle or high schoolers, pass cards around the group and have students make a dot on each card that matches their personal experience. Then ask students to share which cards have the most dots. Questions for processing this activity can include: 

• Which cards have the most dots? (For the “just want to die too” card, be sure to talk about this and steps they need to take if considering acting on this pain or wish to be with the person)
• What do you do when you feel that way? 
• What was surprising about the list of feelings or behaviors?
• What was it like seeing so many dots on these cards?
• Who in your life understands these feelings and thoughts? who are you talking about this with?

Another activity that can be used for individual or group processing is Skittles & Grief. I found a list of sentence stems on Pinterest and adapted them into this activity. Pass out Skittles fun packs and a half sheet of this handout. If using it in a group, have members get with a partner and share responses based on at least 3 skittles colors they pull out of the pack. Ask students to elaborate on their response or model partners asking for more details.

An art activity that can be used for individual or group counseling is altered books (also called art journals). I found hardback books at Goodwill that were appropriate for use with teens and had supplies (glue sticks, paper for collaging, and gesso and paint brushes for washing out words) to have group members begin their journal for their own story. This link gives some helpful hints on creating altered books. I also found guides on youtube and pinterest that were helpful in my planning. 

This guidebook has great information for caregivers on developmental grief responses and resources for supporting children and adolescents as they grieve. 

Have other favorite activities or resources that have worked well with adolescents? Share them in the comments! 

Technology for the Win!

I presented a breakout session earlier this week at the TN School Counselor Leadership Institute called "Technology for the Win!" targeted for elementary school counselors.

This is a copy of the handout that I gave out to a packed room! I also shared that I'd be uploading some lessons in Notebook onto SMART exchange for download. This should be the link to files I've uploaded onto this site. Will continue to add things to exchange so check back!

Keep Counseling.

Happy National School Counseling Week! I'm so proud to be a part of this profession dedicated to helping students succeed academically while supporting their social and emotional development. I received this note from a student at the holidays and thought this week was a perfect time to share. Little reminders that what you're doing makes a difference are needed some days!

The Thankful Book

With Thanksgiving later this week, we're spending some time in 1st grade learning about gratitude. Below is my lesson plan for this lesson. I loved this story as a way to help students brainstorm some of the things they are thankful for!

Hook: When someone does something nice for you, how do you let them know you appreciate it? (saying thank you, hugs, smiles) How do you feel inside when someone does something nice? (happy, thankful) With Thanksgiving later this week, we are going to talk today about some  of the ways you show gratitude.

Activities:

•  Read The Thankful Book by Todd Parr. Discussion – what might the author do when he feels thankful for all of these things? How would feeling thankful change his actions?
• Watch video trailer summary of book.
• Activity: Students will write and illustrate their own “The Thankful Book.”
• Students will read books to class as time allows.

Closure: There are so many things to be thankful for! Try to think of something each day you are thankful for. “I can be thankful for so many things!” 

And how sweet was this page that showed that one of my students was thankful for me! Warmed my heart today!!

7 Habits of Happy Kids - 1st Grade Style

After hearing a lot about Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Happy Kids in the past year, I decided to give it a try. While there are school-wide curriculum resources through The Leader In Me website, I wasn't quite ready to purchase the whole curriculum. So I purchased two items that have enabled me to teach the content and found various other resources online that have reinforced my lessons. The students have really mastered the basic concepts of each habit. I used the book The 7 Habits of Happy Kids and I downloaded this awesome craftivity pack from Teacher's Pay Teachers. I did have to tweak some of the craftivities to simplify them for the sake of time and paper. But overall they have been a great reinforcement for what we've been learning.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then Be Understood

Habit 6: Synergize

Habit 7: Sharpen The Saw

There are tons of other resources for 7 Habits available via Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest. I've also been teaching this to my 4th grade students and will have some follow up posts about what I've been using to teach them.

No, David!

In a Kindergarten lesson, we read three books by David Shannon: No, David!, David Goes to School, and David Gets in Trouble. As we read the books we identified the behaviors that were causing David to get in trouble and what better choices he could be making. After reading we identified characteristics and behaviors that would describe a Peacebreaker or a Peacemaker. I charted student responses on the board.

We made a David craft as a way to reinforce the story. These books are a great resource for discussing positive behaviors and expectations that lead to school success!

Feelings Centers.

This year our school schedule has a unique Friday rotation to allow for vertical PLCs to meet. Because of this I have 3 55-minute classroom guidance rotations on Fridays outside of my usual every other week schedule, and I see these Friday classes every 6 weeks. I have been using these extra guidance times for "Fun Friday" so that these classes don't move ahead from their peers in my classroom guidance curriculum.

One of the things I've done so far with 3rd - 5th grade classes is centers, and these were a huge success! I loved being able to rotate around the room and observe the students learning and engaged, and the students were excited for a change of pace! This first rotation of centers focused on feelings. They were easy to put together and the students had a blast. Each rotation lasted about 10 minutes which was perfect for what I had planned. Here were the rotations I used:

1. Reading Center: I had a bucket full of books from my shelves about feelings, and students were invited to sit in my chair or lie on the carpet to read for a while.

2. iPad Center (definitely a favorite): I had access to 5 iPads so each child could use their own, and students explored the Feel Electric app. It has various games using feelings vocabulary. (I also researched how to set the iPads in guided access mode so students could not get out of this app.)

3. Poetry Center: I had students choose a feeling word to focus on and write a poem using a template I provided. They could then illustrate their poem and share it with others at their table.

4. Game Center: Students played Feelings Bingo and took turns being the caller of the feeling words for their group.

5. Art Center: I had this template of blank feeling faces for students to use to illustrate and label 12 different feelings.

I'm excited to try centers focused on other topics. I'm thinking bullying will be my next rotation to put together. Have you ever tried center rotations in your school counseling program?

Today I Feel . . .

Building a feelings vocabulary is an important part of my school counseling curriculum. In first grade we read Jamie Lee Curtis' Today I Feel Silly and made these feelings wheels.

After we finished, I called out a situation and students would point to it on their wheel. It was a great way for them to learn the vocabulary and connect feeling words within a context.