After the response to my solution-focused counseling on a clipboard, I thought I would share some other ways that I continue my philosophy of think about it once and make it easy for yourself in the future. I've always worked in really big schools and while I pride myself on knowing my kids pretty well, I inevitably get a referral for a student that I need to get to know a little better. I also kind of think that first individual session can be a little awkward and was looking for a way to make it less awkward. Enter the initial interview. And, yes, I do keep it on a clipboard.

Everyone likes to talk about themselves, especially kids. When I first bring a student into my office, I tell them why they are there if it was not a self referral. I'll then tell them that even though I know them around school, I want to get to know them better before we begin talking about (insert reason for referral). Depending on the kid, this initial interview may take up your entire session. However, if you are going to see this student more than once, I think it's well worth it. As you discuss these initial question, you will begin to see patterns that will inform your future work with the student.

Let's take Sarah, my completely fictional student, who has been referred to me by her teacher because she seems withdrawn and sad. I will break down the initial interview questions and then talk about the patterns that begin to emerge. The first few questions are about likes and dislikes. 

• What do you like to do for fun? Play on my kindle.
• Do you like school? yes What do you like about it? reading books What don't you like about it? PE and Recess because I get left out
• What are your favorite subjects? Are there any subjects you don't like? Reading ... No
  
• Do you like your teachers? Yes

When looking at this I notice a few things. Sarah likes to play on her kindle and read. Both of these activities are individual activities. She might be an introvert or she might not have friends. She gets left out in PE and Recess - is that because she's not "sporty" or because she is unliked? She likes school so she isn't withdrawn and sad because she doesn't like being at school.

 The second section gets into family, friends, and home. As you can imagine, a lot of themes will emerge here and sometimes you get more information than you can write!

• Tell me about your family? My mom and my brother (Luke, 4)
• Are there any other relatives? My dad. He lives in California. I visit my Grandma in Virginia sometimes. 
• Would you rather come to school or stay home? Go to School - home is boring
• Do you have friends? What do you do together? Yes, Rachel. We read at recess. Sometimes I go to her house but she can't come to mine. Why? I don't know.
  

Sarah doesn't get to see her dad often and her mom's support network is far away. She'd rather go to school than stay home. I wonder what that's about? She seems like she likes the work of school so it's possible that home is unstimulating for her. She has at least one friend (I would want to know if she considers that adequate) but her friend can't come to her house. I always circle follow up questions in my note-taking so I can see where I might have had to dig deeper. When I ask Sarah why Rachel can't come to her house, she says she doesn't know.

In the next section we start to dig deeper into Sarah's ideas about herself and her world. The initial interview tool starts with factual questions and moves forward to inference questions in order to build trust with the student. 

• If you had a magic wand, what 3 wishes would you wish for? Money so mom doesn't have to worry; a party with all the food you can eat; all my favorite books
• If you could change one thing about:
  • School? recess. Why can't we just stay inside?
  • Family? nothing
  • Yourself? I don't know. Can you guess? I don't know
• We're going to pretend your __________ came in the room? What would they say is the greatest/not so greatest thing about you?
  • Teacher? + work hard - sometimes too nervous
  • Mom? +I'm nice to her when she has a bad day - stop fighting with my brother (smiles)
  • Dad? I don't know Can you guess? We both like star wars. 

Here I start to get more clarity about Sarah's thinking. While I was worried about her home life before, these questions make me think that her home is under stress but that she feels safe there. Her three wishes all have to do with a desire for basic things. I wonder if her family has enough food? She doesn't list any changes about her family and her response to mom's opinion of her are positive. It's clear she and dad don't have much connection and that she tends to avoid talking about him. It's not uncommon for kids to not know what they want to change about themselves. I have noticed that when they do, it's usually poignant. 

For my last section, I talk about feelings in a normative way. I begin with the "everyone feels _____ sometimes," so they know that it's safe to share a time that they felt this way. To end, I always ask students if there was anything they want to tell me that I haven't asked. Usually, the added information is fun and interesting but sometimes it is meaningful in a counseling way.

To make the initial interview even more fun, I created a Getting to Know You dice game. To play, students roll the dice and answer the question for the corresponding number. They can also color in the border and the title as they are talking to you. It would be fun to take turns, I ask a question and then the student rolls the dice. 

You are welcome to make your own initial interview using the questions I've listed for you. If you'd like it all created for you with fonts and borders, you can purchase the pages on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  If you would like the solution focused and the initial interviews on a clipboard, I recommend the Individual Counseling Bundle. 

Recently, I've been exploring the concepts of trauma-informed schools and social emotional learning (linked to great articles on both). The deeper I dig, the more I come back to the concept that our little kiddos at school are real people. It might seem simple, but it is so profound. They are not tiny-adults, they are not antecedents and reinforcers. They are complex with feelings and ideas and hopes and dreams. So what can we do to honor where they are? 

It can start as simple as asking them. I used to work with a teacher who kept a stack of blue and yellow cards next to the homework basket. As students turned in their homework, they would select a blue card if they were feeling down and a yellow card if they were feeling positive. They would place their cards on their desk as they did morning work. Throughout the day, the teacher would make sure that she was able to check in with all of the blue cards to see what was going on with them. She even made time to celebrate with her yellow cards. It was simple and easy to maintain but it sent a strong message to your students that she cared about what was going on with them.

This idea inspired me to create a mood clip chart. This clip chart could be used in both the counselor's office and a classroom. In the counselor's office, the counselor could use number clips to maintain confidentiality. I envision using the chart at the beginning of each group session by student's clipping their mood. In individual counseling sessions, you could assign a student a certain number so that they can move their clip each time they enter your office. In the classroom, a teacher could have students clip their number, name or picture on the chart as they walk in. The clip chart could also be used during morning meetings. 

It's a simple idea, and sometimes those are best. If you're interested, I've created the clip chart for you in my TPT store. It includes 3 different color schemes, number tags, and editable name tags for clips. Just in case you've already posted your amazing MAP It Out wall, I made sure to use a complimentary color scheme. 
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What creative ways do you check in with your students? I'd love to hear your ideas! Comment below or give me a shout out on instagram, facebook, or twitter. I'd love to hear from you :)

Do you use hall passes at your school? We have tried a million different ideas over the years but I find that hall passes in elementary school tend to fizzle as the year progresses. Let's not even talk about passes that get taken to the bathroom. Ew. No matter what, you always have a few friends that need a note to let their teacher know exactly when they left your room. Some people are wonderers, what can we say??

One of my lovely readers suggested the idea to me to make a cute pass. I've always used post-it notes but love this idea. Something fun to keep on hand to add a little brightness to your day. Download the Back to Class Pass right here and view it below.

Love you, mean it. ​Mwah. 

If you've read my post on solution focused on a clipboard, you know that I like to create tools that make my life easier. I also like things to look nice and be useful at the same time. To meet both needs, I created the Map It Out wall for your school counseling office. To explore, I am going to walk through the process with a real student we'll call Corey. 

Corey was a fourth grader when I began this work with him. He was a really tough kid who struggled both with his behavior and with understanding empathy. He often hurt others and seemed not to care. When reading stories about sad things, he couldn't understand why the character would act against their own best interest. I had known Corey since he was a Kindergartener and we had worked closely together all those years. However, to be honest, Corey really wasn't doing well. It seemed like all the other things I tried had failed - behavior contracts, solution focused, understanding feelings, work with his family, and many more ideas. I hadn't tried the Achievement Plan because I didn't think he cared enough to work on his behavior. In fact, I think this is why solution focused wasn't very effective for him, I couldn't get the hook he needed in order to try. 

The MAP It Out plan is based on the work of William Glasser. In this theory, humans have 5 wants:
o Survival – basic needs & safety
o Belonging – fitting in, having a tribe, connecting
o Power – significance, competence, ability to achieve your goals
o Freedom – free choice, to do what we want
o Fun – FUN

I thought I knew Corey so well. I just knew he would say Power. He was a "power and control" kind of kid, or so I thought. To my utmost surprise, he chose Belonging. I was shocked! I never thought he cared enough about others to want to be connected to them. Clearly, I had already made a huge breakthrough. Now I had the hook I needed to encourage Corey to work towards change. 

Once Corey had a reason to try to change, we could have a really honest conversation about the choices he was making now. Without commentary, I wrote what he said (he didn't want to do the writing) on a post it and divided them between "It's Working" and "It's Not Working." This can be a challenging concept to think about. If I want to belong and I tease others because I think it's funny - is it working? It's might be working in amusing me but not in helping me to belong. This part of the process is important and should not be rushed. 

As we all know, wanting an outcome and working for an outcome are not the same thing. It was important to assess how hard Corey was willing to work. If he's not willing to do "Whatever It Takes," it might be hard to see change. Conversely, if he says he's willing to work hard but doesn't, he's accountable to himself and his actions. I used this part of the tool to explore his feelings about the process of change. Change is hard and the effort check is a great way to get a feel for where your student is.

Working together, Corey and I created a SMART Goal and Plan for his behavior. He was able to identify exact things that he could do to work on belonging in his classroom. In his case, he chose to stop teasing others. He thought he was funny but no one else did. Not a great way to belong.

Here's where I created a great tool that I wish I had with Corey! On this page, the student (or counselor) can write down what they talk about to keep track of their plans over time. It would work great to staple the planning pages in a folder each week. The stickies can be placed on the actual page when your conversation is done. 

So what happened with Corey? He got better. It's been years since I've seen him last but I imagine that his work is not done. Without a doubt, his time at our school was better because of the work that we did. His behavior referrals went down, he was involved in fewer bullying incidents, and I really do think that he began to feel like he belonged. 

What's your success story? How do you break through with students who are tough to reach? We can all expand our tools of the trade. You can get the entire bulletin board and planning page over on TPT. 

Like a lot of people I know, I have jumped on the mindfulness bandwagon. I have been surprised to see how much kids enjoy the concepts of mindfulness. I have taught classroom lessons on mindfulness and used the concepts on some of my groups but I really think that the best fit for mindfulness is in individual counseling. I thought it might be fun to create a list of mindfulness crafts for kids. 

I purchased the whale string craft in the cover photo from the one spot at Target (I think it was $3) as a craft with my own kiddo. As we were working on it, I was inspired to create a similar version for cheaper to use at school. You could even use pieces of styrofoam or a shoe box. Simply draw an outline of an object and have the student place pins along the outline. Then wrap string around in random order. It's strangely soothing, even for an adult.

We can't overlook the power of coloring - it's all the rage for a reason! I love to color while talking with students. You can take it a step further and teach the idea of concentrating on what you're doing and coloring with mindfulness. I can imagine a whole group of students who are working on anxiety coloring peacefully with soft music in the background. Bonus points for beanbags and other comfy chairs.

Counselors often use play doh as a tool for communication but it's also great for mindfulness. Play doh has great textures, smells, colors, and movement to focus students' attention while practicing mindfulness. 

OK, I've never tried this one but I've heard that  it's great for kids. Arm knitting uses yarn and your arms to create chunky knits that are great for scarves. This is a great tutorial for beginners. 

• ​Encourage students to think about textures, smells, and colors.
• Practice breathing in and out with each movement. 
• Teach students how focusing on a new skill can help to "turn off" anxious overthinking.
• Help students to do a body scan before and after their mindful crafting. How are they feeling? How do they feel different?
• Role play approaching the craft with curiosity. Students may need support in thinking about what this means.
• When mistakes happen, practice a mantra. It's helpful to create the mantra before you begin. Some examples: 
  • Mistakes Happen
  • That's OK, now my craft looks unique
  • I can keep going even when I make a mistake

What do you think? Ready for some mindful crafting in your individual sessions? What a wonderful skill for students to learn that will add to their toolbox of anti-stress strategies!