Happy 2013! One of my favorite things about 2012 is that I met so many wonderful school counselors through the blogging world – those whose blogs I read as well as the many readers of School Counseling by Heart who have written to me.  I feel so lucky to have such thoughtful, open, and generous people as my new friends and colleagues. I am beyond excited to meet lots of them (you!) in person at the ASCA conference in July! In the meantime, here’s a wonderful new way for us all to connect – the School Counseling Linky Party that Marissa over at Elementary School Counseling is so kindly hosting for us.

For this Linky Party, Marissa suggested that other school counseling bloggers share what they identify as their best blog feature, favorite blog post, most popular blog post, and the top five blogs we follow.

I began writing this blog in the hope that other school counselors might find my ideas and experiences useful. I am proud and humbled that my posts about topics that are often very difficult to bring up but so important to talk about  – sexual abuse prevention and, more recently, the shooting at Sandy Hook, have been helpful to so many counselors, other educators, and mental health providers. I will be adding more posts and scripts about “hard topics” in the (hopefully not too distant) future. Here are links to all the sexual abuse prevention posts and to the script for talking to kids about the shooting.

Picking a favorite blog post is a little like picking a favorite child, but I have to say that I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of my more lighthearted posts about my on-going battle with the mice in my office and the ones about SuperCounselor, my favorite superhero. So far, SuperCounselor has taken on the extremely formidable Captain Underpants, plotted revenge on the Kingpin of the Testing Mafia, and introduced her strangely influential family members. SuperCounselor will certainly be back for more adventures!

My most popular post of 2012 was Post-it Note Counseling, which describes a simple technique I use to help kids open up and talk about their feelings. I see Pinterest links to this post pop up from who-know-where all the time – which feels a bit surreal!

If picking a favorite blog post is like picking a favorite child, choosing only five from all the wonderful blogs I follow is like having to choose bridesmaids from a large pool of friends. You’d be proud to have any of them stand up with you and you don’t want to hurt any feelings, but the wedding planner (that’s you, Marissa!) has laid down the law. So even though this is kind of an impossible task, and you’d all look great in this awesome dress-that-you’ll-definitely(NOT)-be-able-to-wear-again, here are just a few of my favorite blogs:

Hey, come join us at the School Counselor Linky Party!  Here’s how:

Create a blog post titled “School Counseling Linky Party 2013.”
Place the Linky Party logo (above) in your post.
Answer the questions (above).
Submit your blog post link to Elementary School Counseling. Be sure to link to the actual post, not your homepage.