Have you ever administered a school-wide climate survey? This is beyond the counseling needs assessment and asks about the general climate of the school. In my first district, the county administered a survey to 4th graders biannually. It was a good way to see patterns of student attitudes towards school and was a useful tool for our leadership team. In my last district, we didn't have a tool administered by the district and the leadership team asked me to work on creating a school climate survey. I've included all the steps here so warning- this post is long!

To create the survey questions, I found several resources online and pulled questions that were relevant to my school. Some resources: WINSS, Colorado Safe Communities,  and Austin School Climate Survey (via Casel). I presented a list of questions to my leadership team and we made edits as needed. We planned to give the survey to all students 2nd-5th grade during their computer lab specials time. I would go into the computer lab for 2nd and 3rd grades to help the teacher administer the survey. The survey took about 15 minutes to administer to the whole class.

To make the survey kid-friendly we chose to go with multiple choice responses (after demographics). Our choices were: Yes!!!, Yes, No, No!!!! When introducing the survey, I explained the choices using the example of broccoli- some people love broccoli (yes!!!), some people think it's fine (yes), some people don't like it (no), and some hate it (no!!!). The kids really seemed to get the example and didn't have any trouble with the multiple choice options.

We did find that many kids did not know their demographic data, especially race. If they didn't know, I told them to choose "I don't know" and explained that you can't tell by looking at someone what their race or ethnicity is. 

Google forms is a fast and easy way to create a survey. Many free programs available have a limit to the number of responses you collect. With 400 2nd-5th graders, this wasn't an option for us. To create a form, go to google drive and click New and choose Google Forms under the More section. 

In the next screen, you'll be able to write a title and add your questions. It's very easy and user-friendly. You also have the option to change the theme. They  have many fun themes to make the survey inviting and friendly. To check how your survey looks, you can click "view live form."

When completed, you can click "Send Form" in the right hand corner and you will be given a link to use. I like to shorten the URL to make it easier to share. At my school, we put the link on the homepage of our school website. My computer teacher actually made a non-related picture a hyperlink so that students wouldn't randomly take the survey outside of our class. I wanted to make sure that kids were taking the survey multiple times. This worked really well for us. 

One great thing about Google Forms is that it collects and calculates all the data for you! To find the data click "view responses," and you will be taken to a spreadsheet. This is great for sorting and looking for specific subgroups (gender, race, grade). What makes google forms awesome is the ability to summarize responses with one click. 

To see a beautiful summary that's easy to share with your staff, click Form then "Show summary of responses." This is what you'll see:

If you're interested in seeing a PDF of my school climate survey, I have included that below. (If you are on mobile, click here.)

How do you survey students in your building? What data do you use to make sure that students feel like school is a positive place to be?

Get ready to market your school counseling program! Recently, I was amazed at the marketing efforts of my local library. They have snazzy graphics, videos, and professional quality marketing tools. I realized that libraries are fighting to stay open and the more people they get through their doors, the more likely they are to continue to receive funding. This is not unlike school counseling programs. If our stakeholders – administration, teachers, parents, and students don’t see the value in what we do, our positions will be cut or our time will be filled with non-counseling duties.

​ One fun and easy way to share your data is through a “counseling by the numbers” page. You can share this on your website, in your PTA newsletter, or through a video. Don’t think you can make a video? Sure you can! I am going to show you how I made this video and, trust me, it’s easy:

I used the Legend App on my iPhone (available on android). It also works on iPad as well. In the Legend App, you will add your text and choose a photo if you’d like. Click next and choose the little video of your text that you like best. Seriously, it’s that easy. To save the video, click the three dots in the bottom right hand corner and select “save video.” You can add colors to the text as well. Pro tip: if you add colors, choose the same colors for all the text videos you create.
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​Create as many or as few text videos as you’d like. In my example, I have the following:

• Name of school
• “by the numbers”
• Achievement Group data
• Attendance data
• Number of individual counseling students and sessions
• Number of counseling groups and topic-based lunch bunches
• ​“One Amazing Year”

You can see my entire “counseling by the numbers” page on my old school website. Once you have created all of your videos, open iMovie. Click the giant + sign to start a new movie. Choose movie (not trailer) from the pop up menu. Choose all of the videos that you made in the Legend app (see my list above) and iMovie will automatically put all of them together in a movie. Drag and drop the snippets to put them in the order you want. If you want music, click the gear icon and select “theme music.” The theme photos above change the music. Once you have the movie you want, select “done” in the upper left hand corner. To download, click on the square with the arrow to choose “save video.”

Need some photos?

So, give it a try! Share your video with the world and make sure to tag me so that I can see them :)