My kitchen counter is heaped with kale, swiss chard, basil, blueberries, tomatoes in a variety of sizes, cilantro, radicchio, beans, and, of course, the ubiquitous zucchini after harvesting my garden and CSA farm share this morning. Before I get going on chopping, preserving, and cooking all that deliciousness, here’s today’s harvest of school counseling resources. (more…)
I find great resources all the time, things I use right away or plan to soon, but often don’t have time to blog about them. So I’ve decided to go ahead and share them here in a regular series called Fresh Picks for School Counselors. (Oh how I’d love to say weekly series, but, well, you know . . .) They may turn up again in a later blog post when I’ve incorporated them into a lesson, activity, or have done some serious thinking about them, but until then (if there is a then), here they are as is. I’d love to hear how you use them! I hope you enjoy the first harvest!
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Well, the school dreams have started, and I’m feeling a new urgency to get organized. I’ve even been going to bed a (tiny bit) earlier. The first day of school must be right around the corner. Yay! Ugh! Ack! Yup, definitely experiencing some mixed emotions! One thing that has made going back to school easier over the past couple of years is the knowledge that I take an invisible host of supporters with me. No, I’m not delusional – I’m talking about all of the school counselors all over the world who share their great ideas, encourage me on the tough days, crack me up with their tales of kid hijinks and bureaucratic ridiculousness, and just all-around inspire me. Yeah, I mean YOU! Fellow bloggers Andrea Burston from JYJCounselor and Danielle Schultz from School Counselor Blog have come up with some great ways for us all to connect as we head back to school. (more…)
SuperCounselor has left the building! She is done for the year. She cleaned out her filing cabinets and email inbox, sorted all her binders, bookshelves, games, and toys, and left everything perfectly arranged so that she’ll be all ready to go when she walks back into school in August. She was probably whistling, a la Snow White, while she worked! Now, on her first day of summer vacation, her school uniform is laundered and put away, and she’s already packed to leave for the American Super Counselor Association conference in Gotham City. (We mere mortals will be at our own version of ASCA in Philadelphia!) (more…)
Lockdown practices have always been anxiety provoking, and are even more so since the Sandy Hook shooting brought the issue of potential in-school violence so close to home for students and staff. It doesn’t matter how many times you try to draw parallels between lockdown drills and fire drills – they are different and kids know it. In fire drills you are preparing to get away from danger; you take action to get yourself to safety and the “danger” only lasts as long as you’re in the building. In lockdown drills you prepare to hide from danger; your response is inaction, and there is no knowing how long the “danger” (even if it is only administrators checking for compliance) will last. Clear, simply stated discussions in advance of lockdown drills help, and now there’s a great resource to use when having these discussions with kids. (more…)
Feeling overwhelmed by the out-of-control number of tasks on my plate, I posted the following status on the School Counseling by Heart Facebook page on Friday:
I need an app that will create a 3-D to-do list. Two dimensions are not enough to wrangle all these tasks into manageability! #IthinkIcanIthinkIcan
Ask and Ye May Receive! I found a solution! But first, the problem:
Now, I’m a fairly well-organized person. I am a good list-maker and rememberer. I use (more…)
