Who's REALLY Driving? My (Very) Raw Take on School Counseling Challenges
Apr 05, 2024Episode 91
School for School Counselors
Ever felt like you're juggling the workloads of four people, expected to perform seamlessly in all of them? Buckle up and join me from my car's front seat where I get real about where we stand in the school counseling profession, including the unsustainable pace we're expected to maintain and the systemic issues that often leave us feeling like we're set up for failure. The good news? Falling short may not be your fault- listen to find out why.
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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.
Jump in, ask questions, share your ideas and become a part of the most empowering school counseling group on the planet! (Join us to see if we're right.)
The Mastermind is packed with all the things your grad program never taught you IN ADDITION TO unparalleled support and consultation. No more feeling alone, invisible, unappreciated, or like you just don't know what to do next. We've got you!
Did someone share this podcast with you? Be sure to subscribe for all the new episodes!!
Ever felt like you're juggling the workloads of four people, expected to perform seamlessly in all of them? Buckle up and join me from my car's front seat where I get real about where we stand in the school counseling profession, including the unsustainable pace we're expected to maintain and the systemic issues that often leave us feeling like we're set up for failure. The good news? Falling short may not be your fault- listen to find out why.
**********************************
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.
Jump in, ask questions, share your ideas and become a part of the most empowering school counseling group on the planet! (Join us to see if we're right.)
The Mastermind is packed with all the things your grad program never taught you IN ADDITION TO unparalleled support and consultation. No more feeling alone, invisible, unappreciated, or like you just don't know what to do next. We've got you!
Did someone share this podcast with you? Be sure to subscribe for all the new episodes!!
Hey friends, I am working on a different project than I normally work on. You may hear the sound is a little bit different as I'm talking to you because I'm in my car. I seem to have the best conversations with you while I'm out driving, going to and from kids events, work and things like that. So if I shout something out of the car across the highway to me, don't be alarmed. Everything's fine. I have a nifty little microphone that clips to my seatbelt and hopefully it's picking things up pretty well.
Speaker 1:
I have had some thoughts and just wanted to share with you about this time of year, but also just about our school counseling world in general. I feel like we're in a state of flux right now. I've said this before. I don't know how eloquently I've been able to illustrate it. I'm going to give it another try, because I think there is something to this, especially this time of year where frustrations just seem to be completely overwhelming. Everybody is just like there's no way that I can sustain this pace any longer. There is no way that I can continue doing the job of four people on my campus. Something's got to give, and I think part of that is because of our ASCA National Model.
Speaker 1:
Now, I am not dogging the national model. Let me be very clear before I get into this conversation. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm not saying that I don't like it, None of that stuff. But I do think that that model has a time and a place. But I do think that that model has a time and a place and if you are trying to implement it in conditions that are not conducive to its growth, you're going to fail. It's like trying to plant something in soil that can't sustain that type of organism. It's going to die. You can't plant a cactus in a bog and expect it to thrive. Likewise, you know you can't take a tropical plant and plant it in the desert. It's not going to make it. You have to have that foundation in place that allows the organism to grow and unfortunately, on a lot of our campuses that foundation is not there.
Speaker 1:
We have caseloads that are exorbitant. We have school counselor to student ratios that are ridiculous :One school counselor to 500, 600, even 700 kids and a lot of you, even out there, I know, are working ratios even higher than that. So there's no way to take all of the components of a national model and implement them and implement them well. So that's problem number one. But problem number two is that all of the information coming out in the school counseling world about expected roles and responsibilities and what we should be doing and what we should not be doing, are all based off that national model. So we have principals who are picking and choosing what they want to pull from that model, what they really want to double down on, and the rest of it they're just ignoring. And the elephant in the room that no one seems to be able to see is the fact that that model was written for a school counselor to student ratio of 250 to 1. And I'll tell you, even some of the folks that are in our School for School Counselors, Mastermind, who are running ratios of 250 to 1 and even lower, are saying that to get all of those components in with fidelity and to do it well is a challenge. So I just want to encourage you.
Speaker 1:
If you are feeling like you just can never do enough, perhaps you personally are not enough and you're feeling down on yourself. You're feeling upset because you can't meet the standard. You're feeling beaten down because you feel like you should be running this model program and you can't, it's not necessarily your fault. I think the conversation in the school counseling world really needs to change and we're working hard on doing that. In the school for school counselors world, we're having a lot of really in-depth discussions. In our mastermind we're kind of teasing out the nuance to all of this and then coming up in the very near future you're gonna hear us talking a lot about models, what they should look like, how they should work, where resources should be coming from. It's going to be a big summer and a big fall for us in School for School Counselors and hopefully for the school counseling world at large, Because if we keep taking phenomenal school counselors and beating them down every year with these unrealistic expectations, with the idea of no matter what you do, it's never gonna be enough because we never gave you all the things you needed in the first place, we're gonna lose all of our people and pretty soon we're gonna be standing there holding our hands. And pretty soon we're going to be standing there holding our hands up in the air saying what happened. Well, you and I know what happened. Right, you are not failing If you are giving it your all every day, if you are doing your best to be data informed if you're doing your best to provide evidence-based interventions, not aligned.
Speaker 1:
Those are two different terms. There's a whole other podcast episode coming out on that. We're not talking about ASCA aligned or CASEL aligned curriculum. That can mean anything. It really doesn't mean anything at all. We're talking about true evidence base. Can you point to a rationale that has been peer-reviewed about why you're doing that thing? But looking at all these things, if you're doing peer-reviewed, if you're trying to do use of time, if you're working your tail off trying to build relationships with kids, trying to get input, trying to build programming that helps kids toward their goals, then you're not failing. You may simply be trapped in a system that was not designed for your reality.
Speaker 1:
So take a breath. Find your people. It's so important. You have to have your people as you walk this walk, because otherwise you're going to fall right back down into that pit of stinking thinking. You know what I'm talking about. I'm terrible. I suck at this. I don't know why I can't do this. I don't know why I can't make my principal see I shouldn't be doing A or B or C or D. Don't fall into that trap. Find your people. Find some good consultation If you don't know where to find it, come hang with us.
Speaker 1:
School for School Counselors Mastermind. I promise these are the conversations we have each and every week. What do I do in this situation? How do I handle this? How do I manage this? What's the best way to say this? I feel like a failure. We talk through those things each and every week and without fail. Each of our members comes away saying this is my favorite night of the week. Hands down, I love this. We want you to join us, so go check schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash mastermind. Hope you enjoyed my driving home rant. Maybe it brought you a new perspective or at least reminded you that you're doing amazing work. I promise you you are, so don't let the man get you down. You got this and we got your back all along the way. Hey, have a good rest of your week. I hope it's phenomenal and I'll be back soon to visit with you again. Take care.