Do you need more for your counseling program? More time, more money, more focus? I found that the ASCA National Model's Advisory Council is your number one tool for expanding your program. Check out my video tutorial. 

Today we will be exploring the Advisory Council. Many people ask “What is the point of the advisory council?” or they worry that the advisory council will take over their program and tell the counselors what to do. In fact, the school counseling advisory council is a great asset to the comprehensive school counseling program. The council is a team invited by the school counselors to meet a minimum of two times per year. The school counseling team, or school counselor if you are solo, sets the agenda for the meetings and guides the discussion. The purpose of the council is to provide feedback on program goals (developed and explained by the school counselor), review program results (based on data presentations by the school counselors), make recommendations about the school counseling program, and serves as advocates for the program.

​The first step to a successful advisory council is to invite representatives who will give constructive, helpful feedback and will be assets to your team. The advisory council should have representatives from all stakeholders groups: parents, teachers, administrators, community members, and even students. Make a list of one or two people in each category that might be willing to serve on your team. Review the list to ensure a representation of diversity that matches the school.
Once you have your desired members of your advisory council, invite your members to join. You might send an email explaining the purpose of the council, make phone calls (especially to parents and community members), or send actual invitations. To help, I’ve created an editable one page document explaining the advisory council that you can share with your prospective members. It’s helpful to be upfront about the time commitment that members are making. I have found that twice per year is not overwhelming for most people and I usually sweeten the deal by providing snacks! Each meeting should have an agenda distributed beforehand (maybe along with a meeting reminder) and minutes. Let’s explore some example minutes for fall and spring meetings. In our first example, Happy High, the advisory council has not met consistently for the last few years. Because of this, there are many new members to the team and the school counselors felt that a brief orientation was necessary. After welcome and introductions, the school counselors spent time explaining what a comprehensive school counseling program is and how the advisory council supports a comprehensive program.

After the purpose of the meeting was established, the counselors presented the current year Program Goals. This presentation included their curriculum plan, group plan, and their closing the gap plans in easy to understand language so that all present (even those who are not educators) can give feedback and discuss. Because the advisory council was new, the counselors wanted to list discussion and feedback as its own agenda item to encourage participation. Finally, the counseling team asked for general school counseling program feedback and the overall needs of Happy High. It’s often helpful to come prepared with a few questions to stimulate conversation. For instance, the Happy High counselors had instituted individual meetings for all freshmen in the first quarter. The counselors wanted to hear feedback from the stakeholders about the efficacy of this practice and how to improve in the future. The counselors closed the first meeting by listing the next steps for all those involved and setting a general date for the Spring meeting.

In our second example, Magic Middle, the school has had an effective advisory council for a few years and there has been very little turnover on the team. Because of this, their fall meeting can jump right into its work with less time spent on informational pieces. In this meeting, the school counselors began with welcome and introductions and then moved straight into a reflection on the previous year. They shared the data and gave a recap of the goal achievement. They were then able to spend a larger chunk of time sharing the current year’s program goals and facilitating a discussion for feedback. Once an advisory council is established, there is typically time to include some components that may not relate directly to your program goals. At Magic Middle, the counselors wanted to let the council know about some changes in registration procedures from the district and to gather feedback on a new Mix It Up Day project being planned by their school counseling intern. As always, the team ended with a closing and next steps.

Now let’s look at spring meetings. At Excellent Elementary, the school counselor knew that scheduling the meeting too close to the end of the year would be inconvenient for the advisory council members. Because of this, he scheduled their meeting in May about a month before the end of the school year. After welcome and introductions, the school counselor gave updates on program goals. Final data was not yet available, so he shared the data that he had. In this example, the counselor had perception data following an academic achievement group but did not yet have end of the year testing results.

As we all know, the best laid plans often go awry once the year is underway. The school counselor at Excellent Elementary took this time to discuss challenges of the year. This might be challenges in achieving program goals or other unique challenges. In this school year, Excellent Elementary had several crises that effected the staff and students. The school counselor wanted to discuss the crisis response with the advisory council to gain feedback for improvement. To close the meeting, the school counselor discussed some plans and ideas he had for the next year and asked others to brainstorm as well. As a closing, he presented each member with a certificate and a sincere thank you for their support.

One important aspect of advisory councils that may be overlooked is the varying levels of experience with data and education by the members of your team. Because the council incorporates members from the community, parents, and possibly students, an extra effort needs to be made to make the presentation of data, the discussion, and the feedback needed accessible to all. This is an actual example of program goals and results shared in a way that is accessible to all stake holders. In this format, the counselor shared their goal, explained what they did, and shared the results. In the first example, we see that the goal was: 60% of students who scored a 2 on the EOG last year will score a level 3 or higher this year. We can tell what the counselor did in order to reach this goal: Counselor and intern met with students in 4th-5th grade who scored a high 2 on last year’s EOG but did not pass. Counselors reviewed study skills, test taking strategies, and stress management. 3rd graders also received this intervention based on teacher referral.  We can see the results of the intervention: 69% of students in the group passed the EOG in the area they did not pass in previous year. The counselor also shares their perception data: Students rated the group in a range of 5.6-6.0 on a scale of 6 in helping them with goal setting, learning study tips and whether they would recommend this group to other students. This goal is easy to understand, and the data is pretty straight forward. I think that all members of the advisory council could participate in discussion of this goal. In the second example, we see that the goal was: 80% of students who had 15+ absences last year will have 9 or fewer absences this year. We can see that the counselor and intern met with students in 4-5 grade who had more than 15 absences last year. They learned about resiliency: goal setting, healthy habits, and positive outlook. The results were also positive: 64% of students who participated in the group had 9 or fewer absences. 93% of students had a decrease in absences. Those who participated in the group had 252 absences last year and only 152 this year. However, in this goal, the results are a bit harder to read overall because it lists several data points. The information might be better shared through a graph. This doesn’t have to be hard. I created this graph through a free website linked in the show notes. For the next piece of data, a bar graph also works well and you can add the most important piece of information “100 more instructional days in attendance” to the slide as you share.

During each advisory council meeting, make sure to take minutes that include the actual feedback from council members. Other stakeholders who read the minutes should be able to see a snapshot of the discussion that took place. Consider putting minutes on your school counseling program website or sharing with your school leadership team. Lastly, it’s important to keep copies of all documents, PowerPoints, agendas, and minutes for all meetings. Member attendance should be documented in your minutes or on a sign-in sheet. The advisory council is a great opportunity for school counselors to share what they do, obtain feedback from stakeholders, and to support advocacy of their program. Whether removing extra duties, asking for financial support from the PTA or community or providing volunteer support for your programming, the advisory council is your number one tool for gaining support of your program.

Do you have an advisory council- how has it been a success? Any snags? I would love to hear!

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of incoming practicum students at a local university. I asked the counselors in my district to tell me what they wish they had known about being a school counselor. I also shared some tips on a successful internship year. We ended up having a great discussion and I realized (remembered) how little I knew about school counseling when I was first starting out too.

Be On Time
Schools run like clockwork. When you're late or you don't arrive when expected, you can really throw off everyone's day. Be there when you say you will and stay until you're done.

Be Proactive
School counselors are incredibly busy - don't wait for your supervisor to tell you to do something. Think ahead and start making plans for what you can be doing to stay ahead of the game.

Act Like You Work There
Dress professionally, be courteous, help others out - do what great employees and coworkers do. You really aren't volunteering, the school is generously offering to give you job experience. 

What are your top tips for interns? If you are hosting an intern this year, check out my 5 tips for hosting an intern.

Do you implement the ASCA National Model? I realized that I don't talk much about my journey with the national model here. Let's be honest, the national model is not always the most fun part of school counseling. In fact, when I started my first job, I came back to school from my district's National Model training in tears and asked my principal if they could fire me if I didn't do it. 

Flash forward a few years and I am receiving my RAMP award. So what gives? I truly believe that using the ASCA National Model will help you to be more organized, use your time more wisely, and to work smarter and not harder. Sometimes I think that people view the ASCA National Model as forms to turn in and prove their worth to some higher up in the district or at their school. In fact, the ASCA National Model templates are tools to help you. 

To dig deeper into the National Model, I highly recommend ASCA's Implementation Guide. You may have seen my post on instagram but I literally travel with this book. It is wonderful! To help, I'm working on creating a series of videos about each component of the National Model. I can't wait to share it with you!

Today we are going to learn about the ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors. The Mindsets and Behaviors for Student Success describe the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in research that students need to achieve academic success, college and career readiness, and social/emotional development. Mindsets are attitudes or beliefs that students have about themselves in relation to academic work. The mindsets are exhibited in behaviors: learning strategy behaviors, self-management skills, and social skills. These are observable behaviors commonly associated with being a successful student.

We see mindsets and behaviors in the work that we do through competencies. Competencies are specific, measurable expectations that students attain as a result of a lesson or activity. These competencies, or learning objectives, often begin with “The student will be able to” or “The Student will understand.” Let’s look at an example from the ASCA National Model Implementation Guide:
A classroom lesson on Understanding Bullying: Stopping Mean Behaviors:

• B-SS2 Create positive and supportive relationships with other students.
• B-SS8 Demonstrate advocacy skills and ability to assert self, when necessary
• Competency/Learning Objective: Students will be able to identify two or more positive peers. Students will be able to name qualities that constitute a supportive relationship.

To summarize, the mindsets and behaviors are beliefs and observable behaviors that research shows lead to student success. Competencies are the specific learning objectives for a lesson or activity.

Now let’s dive into the planning tool. As you can see there are four sections that include Mindsets, learning strategies, self-management skills and social skills. Along the right, you see three columns for the 3 domains: academic, career, and social emotional. The purpose of the planning tool is to identify which standards will be the focus of the year in classroom lessons, small group and individual counseling. Completion of the planning tool may reveal gaps within specific grade levels or domains.

Each mindset or behavior can be seen in all three domains. For instance, if we are looking at the learning strategies, the first standard is to use critical thinking skills to make informed decisions. How would that look in each of the 3 domains? In the academic domain, that might look like exploring report card grades and comments and creating a smart goal to improve grades. In the career domain, students might take an interest inventory and create a portfolio of post-secondary options based on their career choices. In the social-emotional domain, a group of students might be learning mediating skills to help others with conflict resolution.

To use the tool, your team (or counselor if you’re on your own) will look at your curriculum action plan, your group plans, and your knowledge of each grade level. You will discuss where in your school counseling program each of the standards is represented. This can include classroom, groups, and individual counseling. In order to create a true scope and sequence document, I recommend thinking about where you really focus on each standard rather than listing any time a standard might come up.

For example, if you work closely with rising third graders on academic self concept, you would consider the mindset “Self-confidence in your ability to succeed.” Because you are working specifically on academic self-concept, you would place a 3 in the column under academic. If your department works with 9th graders on their 4 year plan, you would consider the Learning Strategy standard “Identify Long and short term academic, career and social/emotional goals.” This might be a tricky one because is that in the academic domain or the career domain? Well, both. Discuss with your team (or reflect on your own) about the lessons or counseling sessions that build into this standard. Are they more academic focused (how are you going to pass your classes) or career focused (what do you want to do when you graduate and how are we going to get you there). Remember, this is a planning tool and there is no right or wrong answer!

Competencies are not addressed in the planning tool. Competencies or learning objectives guide a lesson or activity in order to support the standards. The planning tool is intended to capture the implementation of the standards within your program.

Once you have created your planning tool, take a look of the scope and sequence of your program and see if you have any gaps. The mindsets and behaviors are intended to be pK-12 and you are not “required” to cover every standard in your level. However, the planning tool can give us the big picture to see if we are missing any areas. For example, if one of your program goals for your school was related to discipline referrals, I would expect to see that you covered a variety of self-management skills. At the high school level, I would expect to see a large number of standards covered within the career domain. If you see areas that you may have missed, discuss with your team how you can support additional standards within your program. And that’s it for Mindsets and Behaviors Planning Tool. Thanks for joining us. If you have any questions, please let us know!

Now that you've thought about what you cover in each grade level you work with, you're ready to move on to the next step. What would you like to learn about next? Leave a comment below to let me know what tips you would like to hear next!