How Do High-School Counseling Departments Use Social-Media?

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Greetings, School Counselors!  Some of you have already started your vital and important work with students and your school communities, and others are gearing up in the next week or two.

On October 17th at 3 p.m. ET, I will be leading a session on "College Readiness in the Facebook Era" for College Week Live's Professional Development Series.  I'd love to see you there, and next month I'll be sharing more information about that presentation.

In preparation for that session, I am collecting information on how high-school counseling departments utilize social-media to enhance their post-secondary advising practice.  If you are a high-school counselor, I would love your input!  Please click here to take a short survey--it should take no more than a few minutes to complete. I will share information about the results in my October session.

Best wishes for a smooth start to your school years!

The Road to RAMP: Checking the Rear-View Mirror

This is the sixth in a series of reflections on the RAMP process.

This past week a few members of my school counseling team and I met to do a final review of all of our Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP) narratives. We had revised all of the supporting materials prior to the end of school, but left the narrative edits for later due to time constraints as well as wanting to have a bit of distance from the school year to be able to take a little bit more of an objective look.  Well, with those edits the application is almost completely finished.  A colleague is in the process of editing our final section, which will be a video summation/reflection of our program, we will have an outside reviewer take a look, and then it will go before our principal and a school board member prior to final submission in October.  However, the bulk of the work is now complete.

Just like that, four-years of work is represented in twelve folders worth of documents on a server.  Humbling.

I have no idea if we will achieve RAMP status or not--only time will tell.  However, as I think back on the last year, or even four years since we really began this process, regardless of what the outcome is I think this journey has been valuable all unto itself.  As with all things in life, I think it is important to ask the question, "What have I learned?"

• Give yourself time.  Lots of time:  Program transformation is, I believe, more successful and more likely to weave itself into the fabric of your school if it is done over a period of years versus a period of months.  Additionally, as we were doing the final writings and edits on our RAMP application, we were able to go back and speak to components from a longitudinal perspective.  The Mission statement in our application is actually the third incarnation of our original Mission statement written four years ago.  Not only could we discuss how we developed the current one, but we could speak to how it had evolved from its previous two ancestors.  Further, the lessons, the groups, the goals, etc. are now standard practice for us.  Our "RAMP" year was not the first year we had done most of these components.  This has given us time to figure out how they fit into our particular school culture, work out any "bumps," and has allowed the components to become fixtures of our program.
• Collaboration is key.  I am so proud of our school counseling team and the work they have done over the last four years to complete this application.  Rome was not built in a day, and neither was RAMP.  If you work on a large team, as I have, you have a variety of people with different backgrounds and strengths.  Some people are probably familiar with the ASCA National Model, some may not be.  Some may be rockstars with technology and data, others may be great at relationship-building and communication.  You owe it to your team to work together to transform your program on the timeline that is best for them, and to do it in such a way that you are utilizing their strengths so that everyone is able to contribute in a way that is comfortable.  You owe it to your team to provide education on aspects of the ASCA Model that they may be unfamiliar with. You owe it to your team to listen to them if it gets to be overwhelming at times.  If your goal is to develop a comprehensive school counseling program, then it is important to make forward progress at the same time your are honoring the team's timeline so that there is buy-in and so that everyone can internalize the process for themselves.  Additionally, to move forward you need the assistance of the other stakeholders in your building--teachers, administrators, parents, and students.  If you have taken the time over the years to build strong relationships with your school community, this will become apparent very quickly as people jump on board to support you in your RAMP application.  I have been so fortunate to get to work with amazing people who have jumped in to give feedback, assist, and cheerlead us through this process.
• Everything interrelates.  I've alluded to this in previous posts, but I think the greatest intellectual gift for me during this process has been that an additional light-bulb went off in my head somewhere in the middle of the year.  The RAMP application process really allows you to see, in action, just how effective a comprehensive program can be towards increasing student achievement and supporting students and families.  When you set clear, reasonable, and measurable goals grounded in outcome data and then develop lessons, groups, and additional programming to support that targeted intervention, it becomes a machine specifically built to help kids be successful.  One cog links with another cog, and suddenly there is momentum across the board and you are having an impact on the entire system, not just an individual piece here or there.
  

The end of this road is in sight up ahead, but I think it is important to keep checking in that rear-view mirror to make sure that you are not only moving towards your destination, but that you are also remembering the journey and how you got there.

ASCA Conference 2013: One Conference, Two Worlds

Going to a conference of school counselors is not unlike going to your own birthday party, wedding, etc.  The focus is on you, or, in this case, your profession, 24 hours a day.  Everyone there "gets" you.  You live, eat, breath, and "reception" school-counseling for one to four days, and upon returning home go through conference withdrawal in which you rediscover silence, your cat, and conversations that do not involve "achievement gaps" and "evidence-based interventions."

One of the many benefits of this annual pilgrimage to the World's Fair of school-counseling is that through the sessions, meet-and-greets, and networking opportunities you are able to gain a perspective on emerging themes in the profession as well as take the pulse of where we currently stand and where there is still work to be done.  The bonus of the national conference is that you are gathering this information not just on a local or even state level, but from the perspective of programs and professionals from across the country and even from around the world.  Taking the short-view, you can see how what you do within your school and community can impact larger goals.  Looking at the bigger picture, you can determine if you have the capacity and the time to make larger contributions at the national level.

This year, I felt one theme emerge fairly quickly: We have come a long way and are looking towards the future.  So many of the sessions and conversations this year were centered on "next steps" for the profession of school-counseling.  Many schools and districts have adopted the ASCA National Model and are using it to have an impact on students and communities, demonstrating this through data that shows how school-counselors are directly effecting academic achievement.  The number of Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP) recipients continues to be impressive, and on this year's list many of the schools were re-RAMPing, which says that they have been running data-driven comprehensive school counseling programs for years.  What's next?

Taking the model even further, that's what's next.  The conference sought to really answer this question through its offerings:

• Leadership:  A cornerstone of the ASCA National Model, school counselors have always been leaders within their buildings.  There is now a text that offers theory and practical work on how to develop these skills specific to our profession.  This is exciting information that helps us to not only be stronger educational and instructional leaders, but also helps us to develop into leaders within the school-counseling field.  As was repeatedly stated during multiple sessions, school-counselors are the ones with the whole picture in a school--we see it all.  This gives us a unique vantage point and opportunity for leadership.  Additionally, a new edition of school counseling Ethics and Law was just released.  So much of our job lives in the world of "grey" versus black and white.  It is incumbent on us to have strong ethical and legal knowledge not just for us, but for our schools.  Further, in order to navigate ethically within our schools we must be politically savvy and have strong relationships with students, parents, administrators, and community members alike. We are the ones looked to as leaders and resources when issues arise with student confidentiality, records, technology, and best practice.  As such, this is an area of education in which we have the ability to become and assert ourselves as experts.
• Research: As discussed above, we have grounded ourselves in data-driven practice and are now testing interventions and gathering data on the effectiveness of these interventions.  This naturally leads into practitioner-based research so that we can began to establish best-practices and share empirically-supported interventions across the profession.  One of the sessions I attended was about three school districts in the U.S. who studied ways to reduce "summer melt," the idea that the number of students at the end of their senior year who state they are attending a two or four-year university is not the actual number who enroll in two and four-year schools the following fall.  In some instances, large percentages of students are "melting" away over the summer due to a lack of information and guidance on the final processes needed to fully enroll and start in college.  These three school districts all tested programs that took place the summer between students senior year and first year of college involving text-messages, information send-outs, and meetings with student and parents to include finalizing financial-aid packages and plans.  The data from all three districts showed a reduction in the amount of "summer melt," and is something that all school districts could look to as a model.  Additionally, I was able to participate in a session entitled "Data and Research" in which 14 counselors shared information about specific interventions, grounded in outcome data, that were shown to have a positive impact on student achievement.  These ranged everywhere from small-groups focused on reducing discipline incidents to school-wide efforts to decrease unexcused absences and tardies amongst its students. These types of researched interventions are important not only as contributions to the school-counseling research cannon, but also as a means of continuing to establish our profession as one that is necessary to schools and student success.
• Education and Mentoring:  Finally, we need to look at ways that we are paying it forward for the next generations of school-counselors.  How are you sharing your knowledge and expertise in the field with those who are coming up?  Whether you've been a school-counselor for six months or six years, your perspective is valuable and could help someone who is considering entering the field or someone who has been in the field but who needs inspiration or support.  You could consider blogging about your experiences, as Danielle Schultz and Andrea Burston shared in their session.  I attended an excellent session, co-presented by three counselor educators, one of whom was fellow blogger Dr. Erin Mason, about continuing your own education and becoming a counselor-educator at the university level. Things to consider: CACREP status of the school, Ed.D or Ph.D, length and format of the program, future earnings potential.  Bonuses: Researching and teaching what you are interested in, mostly in charge of your own schedule/time, ability to impact large systems of people/schools/communities, ability to serve on state and local boards/organizations.  Additionally, as was discussed in multiple sessions, getting involved at the state level and mentoring other school-counselors, whether you help them to formulate strong SMART goals or are serving as a RAMP resource, can help you to share what you have learned over the years in a way that can both teach and support someone else.

It is an exciting time to be in school counseling.  However, not for everyone.

I also attended a session on helping undocumented students find pathways to two and four-year colleges.  If you are someone who is in high-school counseling or follow the admissions process, you know these resources are constantly being sought by school-counselors around the country.  Thus, this session was packed.  The presenter, a high-school counselor, had spent many years developing relationships with area colleges and universities as well as building partnerships with professionals in immigration law in order to serve her students and provide them correct information.  She knew the nuances of everything from registering her students for the SAT/ACT to navigating the very complex world of financial-aid/scholarships.  She also informed us that as she was a school-counselor in Philadelphia, she currently did not have a job.

This was the other world at the ASCA Conference.  At the same time that so many of us were having animated conversations about the next-steps we could take in leading our schools and school district or getting excited about mentoring a fellow school-counselor we had met over lunch, the backdrop was Philadelphia, a city and school system wrenched apart by difficult budget choices, the collateral damage of which was laying off school-counselors, fine-arts teachers, and instructional assistants.  The ASCA Conference held a session to share information about school-counseling and the situation in Philadelphia with members of the media and various political entities.  The summer will tell if there is any resolution to the layoffs.

My mind comes back to the students in Philadelphia or in Chicago, a city also experiencing closings and layoffs, who have lost the resource of their school-counselor.  Our urban schools are often those with the greatest need, and school-counselors are the ones able to assist students with personal/social issues that may be impacting academic achievement, and they are invaluable resources for connecting students to post-secondary opportunities, just as the presenter above has done for many years.  There is no way to replace that kind of expertise, and one has to wonder just what will become of these students in the future when they have lost that advocate and knowledge-base to help them attain their goals.

As a profession, we need to remain with feet firmly planted in both worlds.  On one side, the world that  continues to dig deeper, taking the lead, building research, and sharing our expertise with other professionals.  On the other, the one in which our colleagues are at-risk of losing their jobs and their students at-risk of losing an educational expert able to help them navigate school and life while setting and meeting their goals for future opportunities.  In this way, we are able to celebrate how far we have come, look towards to future, and at the same time be mindful of our responsibility to support and advocate for school-counselors and students the world over.  

ASCA Conference 2013: Blogger Meet-and-Greet

Always wondered what your favorite school counselor bloggers are like in person?  Planning on going to the 2013 American School Counselors Association conference in Philadelphia in a few weeks?  Danielle Schultz of School Counselor Blog and Andrea Burston of JYJ Counselor Blog have organized a school counselor blogger meet-and-greet for the evening of Tuesday, July 2nd from 8-9 p.m.  Details are in the flyer below--hope to see some of you there!
 

Danielle and Andrea are also leading a conference session about blogging if you want even more information--check it out at the conference.

See you in Philly!

School Violence and Resiliency

In the last few weeks, another school-violence plot was uncovered and thankfully stopped in Albany, Oregon.  As with any of these incidents, there are always a lot of questions raised: Why?  What warning signs were there?  How can we prevent things like this from happening in the future?

As school counselors, we are often looked to for answers to these questions in an effort to help try to make sense of what seems unthinkable, and to reassure communities that schools are safe places for students and staff.  I was able to discuss this topic this past Wednesday on KGAL Talk Radio (starts at 37:38), a station based in Albany, Oregon, where this latest incident occurred.  One of the main questions the program host had for me was, "What are the warning signs?"  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has a list of risk factors for youth violence.  It is important to note that just because a student may be exhibiting or experiencing some of these risk factors does not necessarily mean that they are going to commit an act of violence--correlation and causation are not the same thing.  A few of them are:

• History of victimization
• Substance use and misuse
• History of emotional distress/mental health concerns
• Exposure to family violence
• Antisocial beliefs (spoken, written, posted online)
• Poor family functioning
• Low parental involvement
• Inconsistent, extreme, or relaxed discipline standards at home
• Social rejection amongst peers
• Membership in a delinquent or anti-social peer group
• Lack of involvement in school or community activities
• Poor academic and school performance 

source: www.cdc.gov

Does this mean that every child that has one or more of these risk-factors is planning to do harm?  Of course not.  However, as school counselors we deal with that list every day at all levels, elementary through high-school.  If a child is not having success with peers at school, we develop friendship and social-skills groups to help them build connections with other students.  We might also work with students on finding some club or activity they can participate in that would increase their connection to the school and community.  Meanwhile, we are educating our whole schools about bullying, the roles of bullying (including that of the bystander), the consequences of bullying, and how to report bullying, all in an attempt to lessen student victimization and isolation as well as increasing empathy amongst our populations.  If students are not finding success at school, we help teach study and organization skills.  We work to build relationships between teachers and students to improve communication and therefore, academic success.  If a child is struggling with mental illness, we work with the family and additional support personnel such as a school psychologist or social worker, connecting them to resources within and outside of the school to give them the help they need.  Our relationship with the families of our students can often allow us to help strengthen the connection between students and parents if they are going through a particularly difficult time together.  The very nature of our role within schools is to support all of our students, and we are uniquely qualified to help address the risk factors presented here.  Further, in my interview, one of the things that I felt was most important about this latest incident in Albany, OR, was that it was prevented.  The student in question made statements that were concerning, and ultimately someone reported this to the authorities.  Again, because our role in schools is ideally a non-punitive one, we work hard to establish relationships with all of the students on our case-loads so that they feel comfortable talking to at least one adult within building.

Beyond addressing individual risk factors, school counselors can also help to develop resiliency skills in children.  What is this, exactly?  Basically, we are teaching skills and strategies that help children develop protective factors and build coping mechanisms so that as challenges inevitably arise throughout their lives, they are more able to deal with them successfully.  By teaching these concepts, you are giving them a "toolbox" that they can open when the road gets bumpy, even if there is no one else around to give them support.  Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, has developed a resiliency program, based upon work by Henderson and Milstein.  There are six components:

• Increase pro-social bonding
• Set clear, consistent boundaries
• Teach life skills
• Provide caring and support
• Set and communicate high-expectations
• Provide opportunities for meaningful participation

source: www.fcps.edu

If we look at these six components in more detail, school counselors are highly qualified to teach students skills, help them practice these skills, and then assist them with applying them to their own lives.  As stated before, we teach lessons and develop groups to help students develop appropriate social skills.  We teach children coping skills.  We are able to provide support to not only students, but also to families, teachers, and school personnel.  Through goal setting and post-secondary planning, we are helping to communicate high-expectations but also giving them the steps to reach these expectations.  Finally, though our lessons and groups, as well as by connecting them to activities, clubs, and groups, we are helping students to find ways to share their unique thoughts and talents in a meaningful way with their communities.  For more information and additional resources that you can use to help build resiliency in your own students, click on the links presented above.  

However, as I spoke about in my radio interview, to be able to form trusting relationships with students and families, to be able to develop and implement interventions that address possible risk factors, and to build resiliency in all students, we need to have school counselors present in every school, and we need to have reasonable ratios.  The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a ratio of 1:250.  Yet, Oregon, where this latest incident occurred, stands at 1:553.  More extreme situations exist in states like California, where the ratio sits at 1:1016, or in the city of Philadelphia, which has just enacted a school budget that will cut school counselors, in addition to arts programs, librarians, and athletics--programs that can help decrease isolation and increase connections between students and schools.  Given the opportunity, we are capable of doing so much to create safe and welcoming environments for all students, as well as develop supportive interventions for students who are struggling.

Safe at School: Feedback Needed

The American School Counselor Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the School Social Work Association of America are partnering with the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to gather important information about the climate of our schools and the preparation of school-based mental health and academic support personnel.  If you are not familiar with GLSEN, they are one of the leading organizations assisting schools in supporting the needs of sexual and gender minority youth.  Beyond this, they have a wealth of resources and curriculum to support educators and students in building safe and inclusive educational environments for all, and are strong advocates for creating bully-free schools.

Additionally, GLSEN does an amazing amount of research, examining everything from school climate as it relates to LGBT youth to the specific experiences of LGBT students of color.  One of their next projects is to examine the pre-professional and professional training of school counselors, school psychologists, and school social-workers with regards to creating safe and supportive environments for all students.  If you are a middle-school or high-school counselor, psychologist, or social-worker, please take 15 minutes and complete the survey at www.safeatschool.org.  The more school helping professionals that take this survey, the stronger the data will be and the better picture they will be able to paint of just where we stand in our profession with regards to this topic.

Please pass this survey on to the other mental health and academic support personnel in your building, and feel free to share this information through Facebook and Twitter.

The Road to RAMP: Putting It Together

This is the fifth in a series of reflections on the RAMP process.

It's April, and we are in full-fledged RAMP application mode.  Programs and groups are in the process of being completed, narratives are being written, data is being collected, and reflection is occurring at a frenzied pace.  Planning for the final component, the Program Evaluation, is underway.  Why now?  The month of May starts with AP testing, followed immediately by our state End-of-Course exams, and once June hits we are knee-deep in graduation.  For us, this next month is really the best opportunity we have to complete as much of the application as possible.

As we are in the throws of all of these tasks, I cannot get the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim's Putting it Together out of my mind.  I have decided that if I ever facilitate a presentation on this stage of the RAMP application, I will first play this video--in my head I've already designed a collaborative learning activity around it.  Take a listen to the whole song and you will understand why:

Bit by bit, putting it together.  
Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art.  
But without the proper preparation having just a Vision's no solution, everything depends on execution.  
First of all you need a good foundation otherwise it's risky from the start.
Gathering supporters and adherents...

Sound familiar?  So much of this song encapsulates the RAMP experience.  This is not a do-all-of-it-in-one-year or one-sitting process.  Rather, it takes bits of work over time and then piecing that work into a whole for a successful application.  It is important to have a strong foundation--Mission, Vision, Beliefs--before you begin, as these will inform the rest of your program's components along the way.  However, just having this foundation is not enough--there is importance in how you implement and execute your programming based on these fundamentals, or else you are not going to be able to effect change.  Further, you cannot build a comprehensive school-counseling program in a vacuum--you have to build relationships with stakeholders in order to garner support for your work with students, families, and the school community.

As we have begun to write our narratives, I find that the "nerd" in me is really enjoying "putting it together."  The narratives are forcing us to go more deeply into the work that we have done.  We find ourselves looking back as to what the impetus and data were that compelled us to implement a certain program or set a specific goal.  We are looking at the format of the conversations and collaboration that have occurred, helping us to form a common set of Beliefs in our practice, determining how we use our time, deciding which team members would be responsible for certain programs, and why curriculum fits within certain ASCA standards.  Most important, it is helping us to make the connections between all of the different components of the application for ourselves.  I must admit that I am truly humbled as we are finalizing this process by the amount of work and dedication that our school counseling team has made as a result of this process.  Sometimes you get so caught up in the day-to-day that you forget to take a few moments to step back and see just how far you've come and appreciate how hard everyone has worked.

If you and/or your team are also in the process of "putting it together," here are some things to consider as you compile your data and write your narratives:

• Follow the rubric:  Each component of the RAMP application has specific criteria that can be found in the grading rubric.  There is information about what the expectation is for the entire component, but also separate information that specifically states what the narrative is supposed to cover.  Further, look at the expectations for scores of "4" and "5," as they also contain information pertaining to how a strong narrative should read.
• Gather your data, including longitudinal data:  Collecting the data on the programs and interventions you have currently been running is important, but I am also referring to past years of data, or longitudinal data.  How have your Beliefs, Mission, and Vision come about and been changed and reviewed over the last several years to get to its current incarnation?  What data from past years led you to the program and achievement gap goals in your application?  Were there experiences in previous years that helped you to determine the membership and focus of your advisory council or small-groups?  This would be a great time to also review past needs assessments, either of your entire program or from specific components.  The rubrics for the narratives are often asking for you to give the reviewer some past context for a specific component that is founded in data.
• Do a final check to make sure everything ties back to the goals: This one was key for me.  I will admit to you out there in the blogosphere that I was stuck for the longest time on the curriculum lessons.  Our small-group that we were focusing on clearly supports one of our goals. Our goals, calendars, management agreements, etc. are all supported by our Mission and Vision statements.  However, I was somewhat baffled by how all of our curriculum lessons were going to be measured with outcome data, given that so many of the lessons at the high-school level are focused on post-secondary options and career planning, which is not something that can be easily measured until graduation.  It took two conversations with Super RAMP Mentors for it to suddenly lock--they needed to somehow be lessons that addressed the goals, all of which are mired in outcome data.  Two of our lessons already tied in nicely to two of the goals, and members of the team were able to easily construct a targeted lesson for the third that actually adds a stronger layer to our original program.  Moral of the story: keep asking questions based on the rubrics.  If something still doesn't seem to make sense, e-mail, call, or ask someone in person to make sure that you are on the right track.
• Collaborate on and have someone review your narratives, preferably with the rubric in front of them:  One of my extra-duties this year is to help coordinate our RAMP application.  As such, I am responsible for a lot of the writing of the narratives, keeping us on schedule, and reviewing of materials.  However, for us this is a team process, and it cannot be done alone.  Last week I sat down with another team-member and worked on one of the narratives.  She sat with the rubric in front of her and as I was writing she was asking key questions about what I was including or not including and letting me know if what was clear in my mind was actually clear on paper.  As a result, the narrative is not only well-constructed and understandable, but it contains all of the nuances and components that are asked for in the rubric.  If you are responsible for writing all of them, have someone else look at them and offer comments--if they do not easily understand an idea, then a reviewer might not either, and it is probably worth another look and some revision.  If you are part of a team, have other team members who may have more knowledge of a particular component collaborate with you on the narrative so that it is as full and detailed as possible.  However, ultimately, you want all of the narratives to have the same feel and a similar voice, so it may be best for one person to go through at the end and edit them to make sure the style is cohesive and unified.

If you've been in your data collection year, as we have, you are coming to the end of your road.  While we often have a million things to do as we approach the summer, these narratives really offer us the opportunity to make the connections between our past, our present, and our future, as well as stop and reflect on the amazing transformations that have occurred within our programs, our personnel, and our communities.  By "putting it together," we are able to demonstrate how far we have come as a school and as a profession.  Good luck!