School Counselor Blog

In honor of Throwback Thursday I thought I would share a video that the School Wide Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (SWPBIS) team created at my previous school to showcase and explain our SWPBIS Program. I have been thinking about this video a lot lately and I cannot believe I have never shared it with you. The population at our school was K-8 and we involved students in creating and starring in this video. Camp Curtin Elementary PBIS video from Skynine Live on Vimeo . We used this video to do full school refreshers of our program. We showed the video to new students and families to provide them with information about our school behavior expectations. It was a blast making this video with our excellent SWPBIS Team. The husband of one of the teachers I worked who is a professional videographer filmed and edited the video. If you have been a long time reader, you will notice that LaRRRy, our "Leopard Leader Recognition Mascot"  makes a few cameos...

I wanted to share another activity that goes along with the welcoming new students theme. All students who are new to my district participate in a new student orientation. They are given a tour and do some icebreaker activities. I wanted to plan a check-in activity for students after they had been at the for month to see how their school year was going so far and if they had any questions now that the school year was up and running. I scheduled three meetings during students study hall period, which is about 40 minutes long. I scheduled a separate check-in for each grade level. I invited all students in the grade who started new to the district since the beginning of the school year. At the check-in, I had students first take a New Student Survey . You can view the survey and the questions I asked here . I created the survey using Google Forms. Since my school is a 1:1 ChromeBook school, students were able to take the survey online.  I used the results to see how students ...

I have been struggling to juggle the many things that have been going on in my life. Sadly, blogging has been one of the balls that has dropped. I keep wanting to publish a new post, but haven't known where to even start. I have lots of ideas for posts, but I can't seem to get them out of my head and into a post. Today I decided to just go for it... there is no time like the present. I decided to write about welcoming new students because I have had a few new students in the past few weeks. Looking through my drafts I realized that I had started this post last year and never published it. So, here we go... *** This is an idea that I used last year. This year I did not do the same thing, but I am hoping to do this again in the future for new 6th graders who come later in the year. I am planning to write a new post soon of what I am currently doing to welcome new students! *** Last school year I wanted to try some creative ways to welcome students who come after the school...

The topic of the the February #SCCHAT was School Counselors Matter.    The chat was moderated by Danielle Schultz (me!) ( @sch_counselor ) Middle School Counselor, Counselor Education doctoral student, and blogger School Counselor Blog. School counselors shared ways that they show stakeholders that their school counseling programs matter, how they show students that they matter, and how they show colleagues that they matter. You can view the transcript below or   read the full transcript here . For more information about #SCCHAT and transcripts from previous chats visit:  http://bit.ly/scchat-info . #SCCHAT occurs on the first Tuesday of the month unless otherwise specified.  To add the #SCCHAT schedule to your calendar  click here . [ View the story "February #SCCHAT: School Counselors Matter!" on Storify ] Join us for our March #SCCHAT on March 3, 2014 at 8pmEST.  The topic is TBA. Check  #SCCHAT schedule  for details. ...