Facing Open House

Oh, Open House! The scramble to get ready, the shaking of what seems like a million hands, the graceful (you hope) redirection of parent disclosures that are better saved for a private meeting time, the insights gained from seeing interactions between kids and their parents, the happy reunions with former students who are back for a visit with their younger siblings (or, as is now my surreal reality, with their children), and the bleary-eyed stumble home after a 12+ hour day at school. Open House is always a wonderful event, but it’s exhausting!

This year, inspired by lots of great Open House ideas from other counselors’ blogs, I suggested to my co-counselor that we try something different.

A Post-It Note Happy Ending

One of the most widely-read posts on School Counseling by Heart is Post-It Note Counseling, which outlines a technique that I use in individual counseling sessions to help kids who are reluctant to talk about how they are feeling. I use Post-It Note counseling all the time, to great effect. I think others must be using it too, because fairly frequently it pops up on my Pinterest page, so far removed from the original pin that I think it must have circumnavigated the globe before arriving back here! (Luckily, it still links back

All Pirates Cry. And So Do I.

It’s been something of a sob-fest around here recently. Last Friday, on our last day of school, the fifth grade boys in particular had a very hard time. Two of them burst into tears and could not finish reading their poems during the graduation celebration. Afterwards, the guy who ALMOST NEVER stops being silly was sobbing, as was a boy who is moving, and the boy who doesn’t like to show any feeling other than annoyance. The boy who is probably the coolest of them all threw himself into my arms before I even knew he was headed my way. Several others teared up over the course of the day and, for a few of them, crying recurred over the course of the day. It provided a great opportunity

What’s Behind the Angry Mask?

You had to stay in for recess. Another kid took the seat you had saved in the cafeteria. Somebody uninvited you to their birthday party. You got in trouble, but nobody else got caught. A classmate called you a name. You got bumped by a swinging backpack.. Are you feeling angry? Well, not exactly . . .

As you know, anger is a secondary feeling that layers on top of one or more other uncomfortable feelings. In my experience, kids have limited success working on managing their anger unless they are