One of the hardest things about a job as a school counselor is juggling many different types of duties at once. I get a lot of questions about how to set up an elementary school counselor's schedule. I believe that it is really important to set a schedule early in the year so that you don't get pulled into too many things and realize it's January before you've started any groups. Sound familiar? Of course, crises and unexpected visitors of the grown up and kid kind are part of the job too. So how do you do it?
Here's how I coordinate my schedule:
1. Set a yearlong calendar with the number of classroom lessons to teach in each grade level and a plan for topics to cover.
2. Create a weekly plan with groups to run, planned meetings, and other scheduled items.
3. Allow teachers to sign up for classroom lessons in a google doc . Because you've already scheduled your groups and put those in the google doc, you won't get double booked or realize that the one time a kid is available for a group, you have a class.
4. When your schedule is done, it will look something like this. You can fill in your individual counseling, parent meetings, teacher consults and all those other things you do in the empty slots.
This has worked pretty well for me over the years. I like to be organized and know ahead of time what I am doing. The problem I fall into is having too many things scheduled. If your schedule is too full, you can't fit in enough responsive services to meet the needs in your school.
How does scheduling work for you? I am lucky enough to not be on the specialist rotation at my school. If I were, I could likely do the same scheduling routine but it would be much harder to fit everything in. Good luck in the new school year!
To read more: Calendars for Productivity and 5 Steps to a Yearlong Counseling Program.
Have you heard??? You can sign up to be a Counselor Up VIP and receive a FUN FREEBIE plus updates and sales info before anyone else. Please join me, pinky promise there's no spam.
This post was updated May 26th, 2017.
