Aug 8 2012

Open House is PR Time

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Vanessa

In a previous post, I wrote about Public Relations for School Counselors. Open House is a great time to promote your school counseling program. Not only is this important for new school counselors- it’s important for veterans as well. Use this opportunity to let parents know who you are and how you will be involved with their child(ren) throughout the school year.

How you go about it will depend on your assigned duties. Over the years, I have usually been assigned as a greeter at the school’s entrance. This is an excellent area to set up a small table to advertise your program. Your table should showcase the different programs you plan to implement throughout the school year. Find a simple table cover and add a sign or banner with your name and title.

On your table, include brochures describing your program, business cards with your contact information, and a sign-up form for small groups that require a parent’s permission like Separation/Divorce or Grief Groups. You can also have your QR code available for parents with smartphones and a small bucket or basket of stickers for students.

This is also a great opportunity to solicit parent volunteers. If you are hosting Career Café at your school, you can sign-up parents who are willing to come in and share about their profession with your students. You can also find parents who are willing to serve on your advisory council. I’d even like to find a parent who enjoys taking pictures. What ever your program needs are, open house is a great time to find your volunteers. Additionally, be sure to have a small board or poster with post-it notes listing any wish list items you have. Parents can choose the item they wish to donate to your program and take the post-it note with them as a reminder.

Why not have a free raffle for students who stop by your table? Find a local business that is willing to donate a free meal, gift card, or sundae. You may also chose to purchase the prize(s) yourself. Announce the winner(s) on the first day of school.

Finally, it never hurts to have a fun puppet on hand. Whether it is on display or on your hand, the students will love to see and interact with it. Here’s a picture of my puppet after her mini-makeover with a new t-shirt featuring our school mascot the falcon. All she needs now is a yellow headband, and she’ll be ready to make her debut! My friend Ed (also known as “Character” Ed) may need to be on stand-by as well. The kids LOVE him!

Stick around! You can follow Savvy School Counselor with free email updates. As always, I’d love to hear from you. How will you promote your program at your open house this year?

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Aug 2 2012

More Character Breakfast Club

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Vanessa

I want to share examples of the flyer, invitation, and exit tickets I will be using for my Character Breakfast Club. I can’t wait to hold my first one in the fall. I’ll be sure to update everyone on how things turn out along with any lessons learned.

I made a sample flyer using the Bullying topic I talked about in my first Character Breakfast Club Post. I will change my flyer each time to tell specifically about the topic of each breakfast club. If you would like a copy of this form in Publisher in order to make it your own, just email me through my contact page and I will send one to you. ( I can only post PDF documents.)

I ordered my Character Breakfast Club invitations from Vista Print. I’m looking forward to receiving them soon. Here are images of the front and back of the invitation. They are pretty basic as any extra information will have already been included on the flyer sent home with students. If you don’t have time to write each invitation, you can always create labels with the information and attach them to the back of the cards.

I also created a very simple exit ticket. In order to determine how things are going, you’ll want to know if your guests enjoyed the breakfast club, what activity they liked best, and if they would attend another one. There is also an area at the bottom for comments or suggestions. Have these available about ten minutes before the conclusion of the event. You can also have special stickers on hand for the students as they return them. I’m thinking about making some that say “Ask me about the Character Breakfast Club!” or “I went to the Character Breakfast Club today!”

I am super excited about including the Character Breakfast Club in my school counseling program. I am tossing around ideas in regard to how I will invite families. I am thinking about focusing on one or two classrooms to start in order to gauge the response. If the response is good, I will offer more than one session in order to accommodate families. My goal is to host one breakfast club for each grade level this year. However, response will dictate how things go. I’ll keep you informed!

Stick around! You can follow Savvy School Counselor with free email updates! As always, I’d love to hear from you! Did I miss anything? Do you have any suggestions for the flyer and/or the exit ticket?

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Jul 31 2012

Character Breakfast Club

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Vanessa

Before I was a school counselor, I taught second grade for thirteen years. One thing I found very successful for parent involvement was hosting a Reader’s Breakfast Club. These breakfasts were held once each grading period. Parents were invited to bring breakfast from home or their favorite take-out restaurant and come to my classroom. During their stay, they would eat breakfast with their children and read together. The students really enjoyed it, and we always had a great turn out.

As a school counselor, you can host a similar event called the Character Breakfast Club. This club offers another way to infuse character education into your school counseling program. How often you hold your breakfast club will depend on your individual school, but once per grading period is a great starting point. You can eventually hold it once per month if your schedule allows. Character Breakfast Club can be held before school and does not interfere with the school day.

Decide on the number of families you can accommodate, and make that number clear on your flyer. The number will be determined by your breakfast club location and supplies available. Once you receive the allotted number of R.S.V.P.’s, you can send the official invitation. You can make your Character Breakfast Club grade level specific, or you can supply a range of activities in order to leave it open to all. You can also group your clubs K-1, 2-3, and 4-5. The school where I work tends to have a higher parental involvement in the lower grades, so combining K-1 is difficult. Once you get a feel for the demand at your school, you can better assess how to schedule each breakfast.

Character Breakfast Club Activities

You will need to schedule 45-60 minutes for your Character Breakfast Club. This will allow time for families to eat their breakfast for the first 15-20 minutes and leave another 30-40 minutes for the character activities. These activities may include BINGO games, crafts, and small group activities centered around the topic. For example: One topic I will address is Bullying. I have the Bully-Buster Bingo game from Mar*co which shares several strategies children can use when dealing with a bully. I also have the activity guide for Bullies are a Pain in the Brain. This guide has a great true/false type activity about the characteristics of a bully that families can complete together. Students can also make special buttons pledging to take a stand against bullying. You can have crayons and stickers available for them to decorate their button inserts. This will give them something to take with them to remember all they did at the Character Breakfast Club.

Mar*co Products has a lot of BINGO games to choose from including Character Education BINGO, Managing Anger BINGO, and Manners BINGO just to name a few. They also sell Responsibility and Respect Bingo which I have and love to use. These are additional topics you can use for your breakfast clubs. It’s not difficult to find a couple of fun character education activities to keep your participants busy and enjoying some great family time. Additionally, you’ll have excited kids ready to start their school day on a positive note!

One last thing: Don’t forget to have an exit ticket at the end of each breakfast club. It should be simple and easy to complete. This will help you determine what is going well along with what you can do to improve the effectiveness of your event.

Stick around! I’ll share more about the Character Breakfast Club in a future post. I will include a sample flyer, invitation, and exit ticket.

You can follow Savvy School Counselor with free email updates. As always, I’d love to hear from you! Is the Character Breakfast Club something you might consider?

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Jul 14 2012

3 Important Tips for New School Counselors

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Vanessa

I remember the excitement and the butterflies I felt as a new school counselor eight years ago. I had just come out of the classroom after thirteen years and was fortunate enough to get hired as the school counselor at a brand new school. I applied for my job as a graduate student and was able to have a paid internship. Although it was a challenge, I learned a lot and had loads of support in the end.

Now having completed eight years as well as having had a school counseling intern, I know exactly what I would say to the new school counselor. If you are about to embark upon your very first year of school counseling, I’m sure you are spending lots of time looking for resources, ideas, and thinking about how to plan your year. I wanted to take this time to tell you what I believe to be three important things you should remember as you begin the new school year..

Know Your Support Staff

Get to know your school social worker, school psychologist, school nurse, and data manager. In my school district, the data manager is the only one of the four who works at the school everyday. The others come on select days throughout the school week. The five of us form our school’s attendance committee and meet monthly to discuss any attendance issues at our school. We work together to establish incentives for student attendance and divide tasks among the group in order to get things done. I always collaborate with our school social worker when I’m dealing with a sensitive student issue whether she is at our school that day or not. (I have her on speed dial!) The school psychologist is a great resource when dealing with behavior concerns and for developing a behavior intervention plan when needed. The school nurse is especially helpful when determining calls I may need to make to Child Protective Services as she can help assess a marking or bruise on a child. The data manager keeps all of the attendance records and gives me the data I need throughout the school year. Because I am the only counselor at my school, it is wonderful to know I have these support personnel to work with, bounce my thoughts off of, and to assist me when I need a second opinion. Be sure to get to know your support staff well!

Communicate Effectively With Administration

Always make sure you are keeping your Principal and Assistant Principal(s) in the loop regarding very sensitive student issues. If you have to make a call to Child Protective Services, let your Principal know what is going on. If an angry parent shows up a week later, your principal will not be in the dark. If an administrator asks you to see a child for a particular reason, always follow up either in person or by email letting the administrator know you’ve seen the student and what you’ve done or plan to do to assist him or her. If you frequently send emails to teachers to keep them informed about a school-wide program or a school counseling program, “Cc” your administrators in the email. This will keep them informed and aware of the wonderful programs you are implementing at your school.

Create a General Plan for the Year

As you are learning about your new position during the school year, you will become more knowledgeable about the specific needs of your school. Communication with teachers, parents, and students will assist you with program planning. Designing your program around the needs of your school is important. If you are not at a new school, ask about any data that could be of use to your program such as previous office referrals or low attendance data. Knowing the areas of concern for your school can help you take a proactive stance in your program. Our school is a Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports school, and we use a data system called SWIS (School-Wide Information System). Before leaving for the summer, I got a copy of all the SWIS data regarding this past school year’s discipline referrals to assist me with planning for the coming year. Make a general year-at-a-glance schedule listing what you plan to do knowing it could change as you discover the specific needs of your school.

Don’t stress! You’ll do just fine. You can’t go wrong with your ASCA National Model plan in place. While you’ve got time this summer, read up on what the plan includes, and do some preparation now. This can include developing your mission and vision statements as well as looking through some sample action plans in order to come up with some ideas for your own plan. (ETA on 7/28: I’ve recently learned the content page which included sample actions plans has been removed. I can only guess the reason is due to the release of the third edition which includes some changes. You can read about the changes here. I still advise being proactive in regards to thinking about your plan for the coming school year. I know my school district does a wonderful job of sharing samples from our district in order to assist us. Be sure to ask your counseling and student services department about this.)

Stick around! You can follow Savvy School Counselor with free email updates. As always, I’d love to hear from you. What questions do you have as a new school counselor?

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