Where did January go? I can't believe that next week is February! Know what that means? School Counselor Week is next week. What?! If you're like me, February always jumps up and surprises you just as you're getting back into the swing of things after the holidays. Today I have 2 simple ideas to celebrate school counseling week at your school. 

What is it about stickers? Even (dorky) neon folder labels that say "I HEART my School Counselor" are so super, exciting to all my students. One year, I had this great idea to buy the (much cuter) stickers from ASCA but didn't order them in time. Instead, I printed these on neon folder labels. I gave them out to every kid that I interacted with. It was so much fun to see the school swimming in neon stickers. What a great way to show the counselor's impact! By Wednesday, I had kids coming to my office because they wanted "one of those stickers." I even had one teacher invite me in for a mini-lesson because her students were just dying to have a sticker. It's fun to be loved. Especially when you bribe them with stickers...

I know that School Counselor Week is supposed to be about celebrating the counseling profession. I would be the first to admit that it sometimes irks me that Teacher Appreciation Week  means catered lunches and gifts and counselor week means we do things for others. But really, amazing teachers make my life easier everyday by supporting me and supporting their students. In that vein, I use "You Make a Difference" business cards and write a little note to teachers that I see making a difference. To be honest, I don't really know where I got these cards but they would be easy to make or have printed at a place like vistaprint.com (love that place).  I sometimes will put a little treat with the card in a teacher's box.

See? Easy peasy and you're done! Celebrate school counseling week without breaking the bank or spending hours making goody bags for your 110 staff members. Pinterest, I love you but I hate ya.

Just in case your school, your husband, your wife, your students, your district forget to tell you - THANK YOU for all you do. You work tirelessly for students and they wouldn't be the same without you. You are amazing and I appreciate you.

Like a lot of counselors, I am a part of my school's professional development plan. I work with two grade levels at a time for about an hour. I generally get to each grade level once or twice per year.

I have recently become fascinated by the Growth Mindset. Carol Dweck is the founder of this theory and began her research by working with students who had been identified as "helpless." Half of the students were taught that their failures were due to insufficient effort and were encouraged to keep trying. These children continued to persist in the face of failure where they didn't before and they succeeded. The control group were taught lessons as usual and continued to give up as they had before.

In one study (Blackwell), when kids were taught in one lesson that intelligence is not innate and then study skills to support their learning- they performed significantly better than students who were taught only study skills. In fact, their behavior and math scores were so different that teachers could easily pick out which students were in the growth mindset group.

In another study (Bennis, 1994), a teachers expectation of a student's aptitude was equivalent to 25 IQ points.

In this PD, I focused on connecting the growth mindset with goal setting. I taught the basics of solution focused goal setting and created a printable to use with students. You can get a free copy of the printable here.

To get a copy of the complete editable presentation, please head on over to TPT. You can always keep up to date about what I find here on my pinterest board.

What's your favorite PD to lead? Least favorite? One you're hoping I can just plan for you? ;)

I can *finally* announce that I have accepted a new position and will be leaving my current role as an Elementary School Counselor. I will be moving to a nearby district to begin working as a Counselor Coordinator for the ESSCP Grant.  I am so excited to be able to work with 9 counselors at 4 different schools. The role is still being defined, but I am thinking that my role will be similar to a literacy coach. 

I will work with my schools to make sure that they are fulfilling grant requirements, help to gather and interpret data, collect materials and resources for the counselors and generally try to support their role and take the load off a bit. This will be a fun new adventure for me!

Never fear, I will still be updating the blog and my Teachers Pay Teachers store with all of the wonderful things that we are learning and discovering in the process!

In the meantime, I have begun the difficult task of wrapping up my role here at my school and saying goodbye to the kiddos. I know I'm not the only person in the world to get a new job so I thought it would be helpful to share the process here.

Of course, the very first thing I did was to let my principal know that I had a job opportunity and when I got the job (yay!). We made a plan for transition and notifying the staff. My principal made an announcement at a staff meeting. I made sure to pull a few people aside and tell them before hand so that they wouldn't be caught off guard.

In my state, we are required to give one month's notice. Because of winter break, I will have known I had the new job for 7 weeks before I leave but only 5 weeks of active school time. Even though it has seemed to stretch and stretch, there's been a lot to do!

To say goodbye to the kids, I created a class lesson schedule so I could get into all classrooms one last time before I left. My intern and I taught all the lessons together so we could both say goodbye. In K-2, we taught a lesson using the book Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem and created confidence flowers with all the kids. In 3-5 we read the book "When I Grow Up" by Al Yankovich and did a Myers-Briggs type quiz to match personalities to job interests.  I left about 5 minutes to let students know that I had a new job and answer any questions that they might have. The first few lessons, the kids were shocked but word spread fast!

In addition to the farewell tour of classes, I allowed students to sign up to have lunch with me. I put sign up sheets outside my door and picked up 5 kids per day to have lunch. It was nice to get to see kids in a smaller group and just chat and have fun. Saying goodbye is important!

If you're lucky, your staff has become a group of friends that you appreciate and admire and whom you will miss! This is certainly true for me, I have been making sure to stop by rooms and chat with my fellow staff members. On my last day, a friend is planning a dinner at a nearby pizza place. The counselors from my district have gotten together to say goodbye. I have also taken the time to send emails and notes to teachers and counselors letting them know how much I have appreciate their time while I've been here.

If you've been visiting for a while, you know that I am a little compulsive (obsessive) about organization. To help prepare for the next counselor, I have made a notebook with valuable information and a spreadsheet with all of my job opportunities. Even though my last day in two weeks, we don't know if there will be a gap between me and the next person. I have farmed all of my "fair share" responsibilities to others in the school and many of these will transfer back to the person after me. I'm trying to keep as much continuity as possible!

Leaving in the middle of the year is hard, but sometimes new opportunities don't follow the academic calendar. The best thing I can do for me and my students is to honor the difficulty of change and prepare the school for the transition. Have you ever changed schools/jobs in the middle of the year? What was your game plan?

I think it starts in 2nd grade. The friendship drama. Sometimes I see younger kids that have drama but it seems to resolve itself after each occurrence. Like when a kid in my daughter's three year old class said that wearing two braids makes you Ana and not Elsa. Upset one day, over it the next. But in second grade, the drama episodes turn into a series and really weigh on some kids, especially girls. You may have read about The Girls group I do with upper elementary, today I'm here to share what I do with our small friends.

This is a 5 session mini-group designed for 1st-3rd grades. We meet for about 30 minutes and sometimes will add a 6th session for a closure activity like lunch together. I typically have girls in these groups but the activities are not gender-specific.

Session I: Getting Started: First Group Sessions
Explain Group Purpose: Friendship Skills
Icebreaker/Energizer: Feelings Bingo or Helping Sharing Caring Game: I use a prepackaged game as an icebreaker for the group that includes some skill based learning but is mostly fun. You can even use a game hack like Chutes and Ladders.

 
Session 2: Friendship Puzzles
Review: group rules
Icebreaker/Energizer: brainstorm qualities of friendships
Skill Building Activity: friendship puzzle- on a 5x8 index card draw a self portrait and write your top 5 friendship qualities around it. Counselor cuts the card with wavy lines to make a puzzle. Take turns completing each other's puzzles for fun and talking about one another's friendship qualities. Model this for students "I see that Michaela wrote 'caring' on her card, I see her caring when she opens the door for me in the mornings."

Session 3: Connecting with Others
Review: Friendship Qualities
Icebreaker/Energizer: paper clips are like people: pass thru or connect
Skill Building Activity: Body language roleplay- act out friendly body language and unfriendly body language. Talk about the perceptions of others in response to each type of body language. 

Session 4: Friendship Blockers
Review: Body Language
Icebreaker/Energizer: If/Then game with happy/sad sticks. Read each of the If/Then statements and ask students to think about the perception of others in response. They can flip their happy/sad sticks and describe how someone might feel in response.

• If you brag about yourself then
• If you bully and push others around then
• If you share then
• If you tattle on others then
• If you play well with others and include them then
• If you give others compliments and say nice things to others then
• If you are grumpy and in a bad mood a lot then
• If you are a sore loser when playing a game then
• If you boss others around then
• If you smile at people then

Skill Building Activity: Path to Friendship worksheet- students reflect on their own behaviors that build friendships (footsteps) and block friendships (wall). This is a very intense activity and not all students care to share their responses. I will sometimes keep students after group to reflect on their paper with them if they need to.

Session 5: Handling Rejection
Review: Friendship Blockers
Icebreaker/Energizer: role play with puppets how you feel when you are rejected
Skill Building Activity: did I do something wrong that wasn’t helpful in making friends? If Yes, fix it OR No, then Role Play with Statements:

• I’ll find something else to do
• They don’t want to play with me but I’ll keep looking and I’ll find someone else to play
• They may still like me but they may have other reasons why they don’t want to play with me
• They may have other things on their mind and may be in a bad mood so I’ll just give them some space
• I’ll keep using my good manners even if others don’t

I like this group because it combines fun activities with real moments for reflection. Most kids know what it means to be a good friend but don't take the time to reflect on how their actions are impacting others and their friendships.

I have created everything you need including role play card sorts, smiley sticks, everything! Check it out on my Teachers Pay Teachers store!