Extreme School Counseling

As a school counselor with seventeen years of experience, I can tell you: It does get easier, but it never stops being hard. I’d like to say that my month-long absence from the blogosphere was because I was on a fabulous around-the-world voyage, but in actuality I’ve been off on a storm-tossed odyssey unlike anything I’ve experienced in my entire career. You know that critical issues class you take in grad school that covers just about everything that can go wrong for kids and families? It was like that, except for real, and squished into the space of three weeks instead of scheduled into tidy, interesting presentations over the course of a semester. Whew!

You Brought WHAT to School???!!!

From the Department of “ACK! Get the Counselor, Quick!”

Don’t you just love how the nutso stuff that happens at school somehow always winds up as the school counselor’s responsibility? Nothing like a little discomfort to clear everyone else out of the room, leaving you with . . .  any number of situations, but today we’ll be talking about The Strange Things Kids Bring to School.  I’d been planning to share my personal dooziest of doozies sometime in the future, but when I recently heard about the unbelievable “gift” a colleague in my district received, I knew this topic just couldn’t wait.

SuperCounselor is Thankful For . . .

SuperCounselor is thankful for all of her kind and faithful readers who no doubt understand that the recent dearth of posts is directly related to all the superheroics that she has had to perform in this pre-holiday season. (She knows you’ve been being superheroic yourself! ‘Tis the season, after all.) She promises that she will actually finish and post some useful stuff soon, but right now she’s got two more crazy days of school, and company’s coming, so all she has time and energy for at the moment is something easy, like introducing you to her family. (Wait, did I say her family was easy????) This year, SuperCounselor will be hosting Thanksgiving dinner at her house. (Surprise! She doesn’t actually live at school, although sometimes it feels that way.) She is so thankful for her family members, who have helped make her the superhero she is today. (Perhaps you’ll be able to tell how!) Here’s who will be sitting around her table . . .

Revenge of SuperCounselor!

Administering standardized tests means that you have no time at all to accomplish the myriad things on your to-do list, much less teach classes, run groups, see individuals, or deal with the inevitable crises that arise when you are unavailable. It does, however, give you plenty of time to plot revenge, even if you are also scribing and reading all the allowable bits.

Who, you might ask, is deserving of SuperCounselor’s particular brand of justice? Well, today it’s the the Kingpin of the Testing Mafia, the guy who decided that it was a fine idea to make eight-year-olds

The Lousy Truth about Attention and Good Counseling

Photo credit: http://www.imperfectparent.com

Scratching your head about how this whole school counseling thing plays out? Feeling like a lousy counselor? Stay tuned . . .

Let me set the scene: End of the school day. Me, teaching (aka tap dancing to keep everyone focused, on task, and in their own space) a lesson on self-regulation to 14 kids, in grades 1-5, in our PBiS Targeted Program. Two paraprofessionals, who deserve to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, providing back-up. Did I mention that this class/group is scheduled at the very end of the day in a behavioral program?

Captain Underpants Takes On SuperCounselor

One of the things I really, really love about school counseling is that you never quite know what is going to happen – and some of what does happen is often quite hilarious, at least in retrospect, if not actually in the moment. Such was the case on Friday, thank goodness! It had been a long week, which featured guest appearances on two of the three days by a child protective services worker, a police officer, and a guardian ad litem. And, no, they weren’t there for Career Cafe! But never fear, hilarity to the rescue!