The Hidden Art of Building Meaningful School Counseling Programs

Faster isn't always better, and "more" doesn't always hit the mark. That's what we're talking about in this episode, where the art of patience isn't just a personal virtue, it's also a very smart professional strategy.

If it feels like it's taking forever to get your campus on the right track, it might help to know that embracing the slow and steady approach in building your school counseling program, despite the world's push for quick fixes, can lead to a more authentic and impactful development of counseling services in your school. Recognizing the benefits of scarcity, too, remind us that a program doesn't need to be "perfect" to be significant.

Are you stuck in a cycle of feeling like you're not doing enough, fast enough, or don't have enough of what you need in your school counseling program?

Tune in for an episode that promises to nurture your patience and strengthen your resolve in a world that tests us in both.



Mentioned in this episode:
School for School Counselors Mastermind
New Year (re)Start
Get the Job!

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Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.

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Transcript

Steph Johnson: 0:06

I recently ran across a little snippet of something on social media and I wish I knew the source of this material. I hate that stuff like this travels around and we don't know who to attribute it to. But it said this. It said most great things in life from love to careers to investing gain their value from two things patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into. But what are two of the most common tactics when people pursue something great? Trying to make it faster and bigger. It's always been a problem and always will be same as ever. That really struck me when I read it. It made me think about you. It made me think about your school counseling programs and developing your influence and cloud on campus.

Steph Johnson: 1:05

In this week's episode, I want to dive in to the ideas of patience and scarcity and how those two things can help you build a better school counseling program. Hey school counselor, I'm so glad you're here with me this week for this episode of the podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, as always, full-time school counselor, just like you, so excited and honored that you've chosen to spend a little bit of your time with me this week. Thank you so much. Well, let's dive in to our conversation about patience and scarcity. Now, these things seem to not really go very well hand in hand. As a matter of fact, as I'm recording this, I'm not even sure when I'm going to title this episode, because it just seems so weird. How patience can benefit building your program Okay, that makes sense. How scarcity can benefit building your program Feels a little off. These two ideas don't seem to commingle very well. But when you go back to the description that I read at the beginning of the podcast episode, it makes perfect sense.

Steph Johnson: 2:17

A lot of times when we set out to build these comprehensive school counseling programs that we've been told are the expectation, we've been told we should develop these comprehensive programs with all these components, that they should be done within these specific frameworks, and on and on and on and that's really the extent of the information that we get exposed to in grad school. When we get on campuses, we all of a sudden realize that not all schools work that way and we're not called upon to build comprehensive programs right off the bat. And it can be pretty demoralizing for a lot of people. I've even seen some school counselors slip into a little bit of a grief process over it because they had such high hopes and expectations for these awesome things they wanted to do and then felt like they got slapped down as soon as they got on campus because they weren't able to do all the things. Now, be honest, there might have been a little bit of that for you when you started school counseling too. So we've got to be able to get to a point where we can really accept the realities of what building a school counseling program looks like Not only trying to gain some comprehensive program status, but the flip side of that gaining the buy-in, convincing people that it's important for students being able to demonstrate the outcomes of a program like that. And so we do really need to focus on the two components of patience and scarcity.

Steph Johnson: 3:59

When we look at patience in building a school counseling program, we have a lot of things that we have to be patient about. Right, because, as I said, we usually don't jump into a school counseling program and hear our administrator say all right, it's all yours, do whatever you need to do. You have your own ticket, you can write your own plan, you can do whatever you want to do. Just let me know about what's going on from time to time, just so I know what's going on. Take this and run with it. This is yours, you can do whatever you need to do. That probably does not happen about 99% of the time when you get on a campus. It already has its schedules, it already has its functions, it already has its preconceptions, it already has its biases about what school counseling is or isn't, and so you're kind of stuck in the middle of all of that mock and you got to find your way through that forest into a little bit of a clearing where you can start to build something of your own.

Steph Johnson: 5:03

So it's really important that we cultivate this sense of patience. We have to have it to overcome all the red tape that we've got to get through all the resources that we need to get our programs established. Sometimes that's materials, sometimes that's time, sometimes that's space. How many school counselors have we heard of that are working in closets? Who are working in hallways or in shared spaces with other people on campus? It's going to take patience to get through these administrative hurdles.

Steph Johnson: 5:40

We also need to have patience in building trust with others on our campus. We need to remember that it takes time to establish meaningful connections with teachers. It takes time for parents to get to know us, and it takes time for students to begin to trust us. We have to be persistent with that, but we also have to be patient. So often I see school counselors show up on a campus and expect others to immediately understand how invested they are in the school counseling program, how desperately they want to serve students, and they expect this instantaneous rapport, instantaneous trust and these wonderful relationships right off the bat. Most people aren't wired that way and remember too that we're coming out of a global mass trauma. We've had a lot of things going on, even since then too, that have affected people's ability to want to get to know other people, to be able to trust them with pieces of their lives, and so this takes time. It takes patience.

Steph Johnson: 6:56

I think too, sometimes we neglect to have patience when we just look at education circumstances as a whole. Education is evolving all the time, but often it changes at a glacial pace. It feels like it just takes forever, and part of that is because we are just so ingrained in the way we think about our schools and how they run, and part of that is because there are so many things that have to happen in order to create any sort of meaningful change. Budgets, space, personnel allocations, changing the hearts and minds of school board members all these kinds of things happen in these little, tiny, minuscule crumbs of action that eventually combine to effect some sort of larger change. So we've got to be patient with those.

Steph Johnson: 7:57

It's not as easy as some people on the internet make it sound, where they say, you know, just advocate for your program and make them see your way, make them come around. Things aren't set up to work that way. Education is a bureaucracy for sure, and so it's going to take time to implement the changes you want to see. So I think in all of this it's super important that you have a long-term vision for what you want to accomplish and that you're okay, both in your mind and in your heart, with knowing this is going to take some time. We often tell our new school counselors and our mastermind they need to expect three to four years of solid work performance before they really feel like they have their feet underneath them, they feel like they know their place on their campus, they know the ins and outs and the nuance of the social structures and the work expectations and they really start feeling like they're a part of the team. Typically we see that takes three to four years. Tack on top of that the time necessary to effect change. This is going to depend on the size of the change that you want to see. But tack that onto the back end of this three to four years and you can see how you're quickly looking at a little bit longer timeline than you know. Okay, guys, I've been here for six months and we haven't changed anything yet. Do those kinds of things happen sometimes, but not often. Not often in my experience and so you've got to be willing to have the patience to see these changes through.

Steph Johnson: 9:42

Scarcity is the other component of growing your program. Scarcity allows you to be able to appreciate progress and to appreciate accumulated successes. Sometimes, when you have limited resources, sometimes when you feel like you're trying to build a program with one hand tied behind your back, we're going to have to look and celebrate the small victories, and sometimes that can be way more powerful than just walking in and saying this is how I want it and all of a sudden it magically comes to be. If we step into a program that is ideal by our standards, I don't know that we often appreciate the sacrifice it took to get that program there, and so I think we really need to have an eye towards I don't want to say a scarcity mindset, because I don't want you thinking about your program in terms of scarcity, but I do want you viewing it through a lens of scarcity, looking at quality over quantity. How can you make your interactions meaningful? How can you make them impactful, instead of just blathering on and on about what you want to build and why it's important for kids? Those are two different things. It's kind of like what I talk about often with regard to handing an administrator a printed list of appropriate school counseling duties and inappropriate school counseling duties and expecting them just to see the light and change their ways. Y'all. That never happens. That's talking at people, right. What we want to be doing is talking with people. When we talk with people about that, we're focusing on the quality of the conversation, not just beating them over the head at every given opportunity.

Steph Johnson: 11:42

I think, too, when we're faced with scarcity, these kinds of limited resources in our programs can push us to get really innovative. They can push us to approach things in a really cost-effective way where we can continually grow. We can serve students well. We can build a wonderful program, but we can do it with an eye toward being responsible and sustainable. I think that's an important component of scarcity. So often people just want more budgets, more space, more this, more that. But if we build these right through the lens of scarcity, when we do acquire those things, we have a better appreciation for them and we're able to utilize them more wisely.

Steph Johnson: 12:31

I think, too, appreciating scarcity on our campuses and in our school counseling programs helps us create a culture in our school where we can value and celebrate every achievement, no matter how small that achievement might be. I think that's important. I think we really need to look toward the little things. The students that you know have shown up three days in a row. That might be a little thing to a lot of people, but to some kids that's huge. We need to celebrate those kinds of things. The kids that rarely raise their hands, are not real outspoken, but walk across that graduation stage. That's a big deal, but it seems small to so many people. Keeping this lens of scarcity lets us admire what our school counseling program grows into. It lets us really appreciate the steps that were necessary to get it to where it is, and it lets us appreciate the road ahead, for the things that we can yet do to make our programs even better for serving students, for serving our families and for serving our campuses.

Steph Johnson: 13:53

In our moment-to-moment fast-paced here-there everywhere kind of world, with instant gratification wherever you turn, it's really hard to appreciate the need for patience when we want to dive in and have all of the resources we need at our fingertips. We want the budgets, we want the offices, we want the opportunities to be able to serve students. It's important to be able to appreciate scarcity. If we can cultivate these mindsets, oh my goodness, what a difference it's going to make to our practice of school counseling. How can you practice patience and how can you appreciate scarcity in your school counseling program? I would love to hear about this. I would love to get your feedback. Please email me at hello at schoolforschoolcounselorscom. I would love to hear how you're cultivating patience and appreciating scarcity where you are.

Steph Johnson: 15:01

Alright, I hope you enjoyed that episode this week and before I go, let me remind you we've got two things happening right now that you might be interested in. Number one is our New Year Restart. This is a completely 100% free series for you. You can go sign up on our website, schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash restart and receive a series of emails designed to help you get on top of all the little loose ends, all the little pesky, naggy things that jump up and bite you later on in the semester. You're going to get all those taken care of through the New Year Restart and, like I said, no obligation on your part whatsoever. We just want to extend this as a help and a service to you as you're getting the spring semester on track. So again you can go to schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash restart to check that out.

Steph Johnson: 15:56

And the second thing that we have going on is the revival of our Get the Job program. Now this program is often imitated, never duplicated. It is the original interview prep program for school counselors. And I tell you what. We have hundreds of comments and testimonials and messages and emails from folks who have been through Get the Job with us that say this program is second to none. We dive into interview strategy. We dive into the resume, ins and outs, cover letters, letters of introduction, all the things you want to know, portfolios I'm trying to remember all the things that are in there because there's just so much.

Steph Johnson: 16:42

But the best things about it are that. Number one it doesn't sound like any other interview prep program you've ever seen anywhere. And number two, we provide an intensive live coaching opportunity to go along with this. So you have the opportunity to really work on your interview strategy, one-on-one with me, to develop an effective plan for putting your best foot forward. And so many folks have said that's the best part of the program. I feel weird telling you that because I feel like I'm tuning my own horn, but I promise you I really want to support and empower you in finding the perfect school counseling job for you. So if you want more information I won't be labored this any longer you can go to schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash Get the Job to get all the details on that. Alright, I will be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast, and until then, I hope you have the best week. Please go out there, serve students with love in your heart and take care.