Welcoming New Students to School
It’s already Back to School time for some school counselors, and it will be soon for many others. Today, I’d like to share with you my routine for welcoming new students to school. I believe it’s so important for school counselors to begin creating relationships with new students as soon as possible. As counselors, we provide a safe space for students to share their feelings without judgment and with confidentiality as long as they are not in any danger. So let’s start from the first steps.
Within the first couple of days in school, I would send a Google form to the first through fifth grade teachers. Kindergarten students are ALL new, so I did not include the kindergarten teachers. The form was pretty basic and just asked teachers to list the names of their students who were new to our school. It doesn’t hurt to also ask what school, district, or state each new student is from as well, but that is optional and just something I liked to know. If the student was from our district and I knew their former counselor, it helped to be able to say, “I’m just like Mr. Jeter at your old school” so they could have some context into my role. The form submission would have a due date which was typically by the end of the first week of school. This is so groups could begin meeting the beginning of the following week. I would always send a reminder email the day before the deadline as a reminder to the teachers who had not completed the form. (They are super busy that first week and appreciate the reminder!)
Next, I took all of the students and put them in small groups by grade level. The reason I did it this way is because I like to pull the groups for lunch bunches and also because I wanted the new students to be able to meet other students their age and in their grade who were also new to the school. Sometimes, I would discover that a couple of them had come from the same school or that they had been in the same class together the previous year. Once I had an idea of how many groups I needed I would schedule them daily according to grade level lunch times. I would fit in as many groups as I could per day. If the lunch schedule would allow for three groups, I’d see three. I would do this each day until I met with all of my new friends. Some years there have been LOTS of new students. New Student Lunch Bunch groups are typically going on for about a week and a half or so. Let me add: This new student routine is easiest to implement if you have a flexible schedule. Unfortunately, school counselors on a specials rotation do not really have flexibility for lunch bunch groups and may need to incorporate acknowledging new students during class time.
On the day of their assigned lunch bunch, I would give lunch bunch lanyards to the teachers. I would pick students up from the cafeteria and the lanyards helped me locate my new friends. Once they got to my office, I would collect them. (Download my FREE Lunch Bunch Tags.) They would spend the first part of the group eating while and I introduced myself. I created a New Student Lunch Bunch PPT which included a slide that was all about me so they could learn about my pride and joy (my daughter), my fur baby, and my love for all things DISNEY! Then, they would go around the table and tell their names and the schools they came from.
Even though they would be a part of the Meet the Counselor lessons in the next week or so, the lunch bunch provided a time for me to give a brief explanation of my role as well. Once they were finished eating, I used The New Student Files which was a great take home after our lunch bunch for them to share with their parents. Parents are usually very grateful to know that the school counselor at their child’s new school created that special group just to meet their kids.
You can also take pictures and put them in the hallway outside of the school counseling office to welcome your new friends and to let everyone else know who they are as well.
Another idea is to have ongoing new student lunch bunch groups throughout the year as more new students come to your school. You could plan ahead and have them already on your calendar each month or every other month. At my school, the data manager would always keep me in the loop so I would always know when new students had been enrolled.
What are some things you do to welcome your new friends to school?
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