BE the best you!

Heres my bulletin board- finally! I don't exactly have a ton of time to work on things like this, and I'm not the most crafty person. I feel like it's sub-par, but at least it's done? 

Just some new additions to my office :)

Magnetic Words

I recently put some magnetic words on the front of my desk where the kids sit. They're not exactly what I wanted (Shakespeare), but a couple of kids haven taken to using them. I love what is happening with them! Do you keep anything on the front your desk? 

I also have a puzzle:

Self Care

Something I'm struggling with is self care. Through grad school this habit is drilled into your head; avoiding burn out, taking care of yourself, eating healthy, etc. The first few weeks of school were a breeze, a honey moon period if you will. Now that things are slowing down and I'm starting to deal with some heavier things, I noticed my personal life start to feel heavy as well. Dishes piling up, sleeping for hours on end on the weekends, worrying myself sick about situations that happened at school, and generally just being absent from my family. 

I'm not saying that I've made a lot of changes as of yet, but I am at least aware of the problem. Sleep has always been one of my favorite things, so I am not going to make myself feel guilty if my body needs a little extra of it on the weekend. This weekend I also cooked a meal with my family, which not only brought us together but we saved some money on going out as well. I tackled the dishes and even managed to get several loads of laundry done. 

My next goal is to start exercising. Many of the staff at my school work out religiously- it's the only way they can relieve stress they say.

How do you implement self care? 

"Guidance" Counselor

The first few days of school have been a whirlwind, but I wouldn't trade a minute of it! I love my job and am grateful that I have the opportunity to work with high school students. My mentor has been amazing; sending emails to check in on me and including me in on the important stuff (504s, At Risk students, etc).

Something I'm struggling with at my school is the term "guidance counselor". Granted, this may be partially my fault as I have not addressed my staff head on. I am constantly introduced as the new guidance counselor, and my office door still says "guidance". I did however have a chance to talk with the counseling secretary and have her change the transcript request form to "school counselor", and she seems to be on board with the change. Baby steps, right? I have a feeling that if I address my staff, they will be really open to the change. I've been told multiple times that they don't envy the amount of work that goes into being the counselor, and think I am doing a fantastic job.

The g-word is the least of my worries though. It seems like a lot of counseling duties are happening outside of the counseling office. I won't go into any details, but right now my plan is to slowly "take back" some of these duties. Again, the counseling secretary is amazing and is all about helping me take the steps to do this.

Things are finally slowing down enough with scheduling that I am hoping to have more time to focus on more counseling related things. I am currently working on a bulletin board for the seniors. It is tradition for the seniors to hang their senior pictures up in the counseling office, so I decided to make a list of every senior and hang it up on the bulletin board. My plan is to write what college/job/military/etc each student is attending after they've been accepted and then hopefully by the end of the year I will have a good idea of where everyone is going! I will post a picture once it's finished.

I feel very fortunate to have the support I do, and I know this journey is only going to get better.

Updates to the office

As it turns out, high school students are kind of nosey. I found out the hard way that they like to snoop, which is why I decided to rearranged my office. Originally I didn't want my desk to be a barrier between the students and I. However, I could be simultaneously working on multiple transcripts at a time and all it could take is a student or parent seeing some classified information. 

I also like this set up better because before there really wasn't a good place for my chairs where the student could see my computer if I needed them too. This works a lot better. 

I'd love to update more (and I will!) but I just wanted to do a quick update on my office :)

Making Appointments to See the Counselor

Something my principal wanted to start this year is requiring students to schedule appointments to see the counselor. I don't know how things are usually around the office, but I'm told students like to hang out! So to help combat students hangout around without a purpose, I created a Google Form for my students to fill out if they wish to see me (I'd like to clarify that I probably won't be SUPER strict about this... If I can get any of my students to use it, that's a win for me!).

The best part about creating this form is that my school is 1:1. So every single one of my students has a laptop. I'm hoping to share this form at freshmen orientation before school begins, and from there I will send it to teachers and student's emails. Planning on mentioning it during advisory too.

 

I love Google Forms because each time a response is submitted, Google Forms generates all the answers in a spreadsheet for me!

What do you think? Do any of you require your students to make appointments?