Here’s Why You Should Care About National School Counseling Week [Episode 110]

0:01
If you want to grab some easy to use email templates to celebrate National School Counseling Week in a really easy way, no judgement here, I made them because I needed an easy way to celebrate and advocate. Join the high school counselor email advocacy challenge at counselorclique.com/challenge. You’ll get four emails with sample scripts of ideas to email your school’s partners, sharing about what you do, the data you collect and your goals for the year. These will help bring clarity and purpose to your role, really all year round, but especially during our upcoming National School Counseling Week.

0:35
National School Counseling Week happens each year at the beginning of February. So that puts this year celebration on February 5, through February 9 2024, which is just about two weeks away. If you’re listening to this, the week that it comes out. Sometimes counselors get down on themselves about this week. So let me first say, if you feel like nobody cares, nobody notices or it’s just a week to feel overshadowed in your school again.

1:00
I see you, I know you’re out there. But I want you to listen to this episode because I think there’s so much more to National School Counseling Week than feeling like a dark cloud is hanging over your head. If you’re apathetic or you’re just curious about some more ideas behind National School Counseling Week, keep listening. You’re gonna love this episode

1:25
You got into this profession to make a difference in your students lives, but you’re spread thin by all the things that keep getting added to your to do list. I can’t create more hours in the day, but I can invite you into my Counselor Clique where you’ll finally catch your breath. Come with me as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that will help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your students. I’m Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype girl here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job.

1:58
Let me begin by saying you should pair this episode with last year’s National School Counseling Week Episode Episode 59, where I talk about five forgotten ways to celebrate National School Counseling Week. Really just some quick and practical ways that you can incorporate some celebrations honestly without trying too hard. And I think that’s the best way to add something extra to your plate. Right. We’ll go back and listen to that episode because I talked about some really easy and no budget ways to celebrate and to get others to celebrate with you.

2:29
Now, the title of this episode insinuates that some people don’t care about National School Counseling Week that I’m telling you that you should. Yep, you heard me right. It’s sort of like why the title school counselor matters over the title guidance counselor. More on that back in episode 80, if you need to hear about that. Some people choose to die on these hills and some choose to ignore these hills all together.

2:52
I’m not saying National School Counseling Week or the title of school counselor have to be the cross that you decide you’re going to bear each and every day. But I do want you to feel the weight and the importance of both of these. And since I’ve already done an episode on why the title matters, it’s now time to get into why we should care about National School Counseling Week.

3:12
Let’s dispel a myth. Don’t get mad at me when I say it. National School Counseling Week is not national school counselor’s week. It’s a week to celebrate school counseling, not just you, not you being the hero of your school, because let’s be real, that’s what you are. I know that, a superhero day in and day out. But this is a chance to advocate for the professional role of the school counselor. If you feel unseen and unheard and forgotten about during this week, take those feelings and compartmentalize them with me here for a second.

3:46
Yes, receiving notes or a Starbucks drink to help you celebrate is of course a welcome treat. But it’s not the measurement of your success as a counselor. And this also doesn’t measure the level of your advocacy efforts thus far. Other people’s recognition of you during this week is not a barometer for how good of a job you’re doing. So I hope you hear me say that.

4:07
National School Counseling Week is however an excuse for you to shout from the mountaintops, why your job matters in schools and why your role matters to students. Maybe you’d do this more often if you had a platform or an excuse to shout it. Well, here you go, once a year you have the perfect opportunity to toot your own horn. I know even if it feels unnatural, you can do it. This is your time to do it.

4:32
Whichever camp you fall in wanting more opportunities to advocate or wanting advocacy to just not feel weird. It’s a built in week for advocacy. So even if you do nothing else to tell others about your role as a high school counselor the rest of the year, I want you to challenge yourself this year during this week to do it. And yes, I’m going to check in with you periodically through email and on social media to see how you’re doing with it.

4:56
The Clique Collaborative is a membership for high school counselors designed to equip, encourage and connect counselors to their greater community. With a professional development driven mindset, the membership hub comes loaded with 25 plus instantly accessible PD videos, completion certificates and bonus features like templates, checklists and counseling resources. But the best part isn’t the features, it’s the changes you’ll see in your confidence and your counseling program. Inside you’ll find worthwhile practical and applicable PD that propels you to action and a community full of your people where you can grow, connect and feel validated. Does this sound like the support you’ve been looking for? If so, I want to invite you to check out the Clique Collaborative at cliquecollab.com.

5:45
Unfortunately, we need to win people over while educating them about what we do as high school counselors. It doesn’t always come easy. We’re fighting against the old guidance counselor stigma, we’re fighting against past experiences that all of our partners have had in their own lives growing up with or without school counselors, or fighting against whatever the role looked like even in the school where we are right now, before we got to that position.

6:10
The 2024 theme for National School Counseling Week is school counseling standards based student focused. This is a great focus for the year because I believe there are a lot of people who you interact with daily, who don’t know that your role is standards based or data driven. You have guidelines, mindsets, behaviors, essentially standards like teachers have, if we’re talking to teachers and admin with some of that same language here, that we base our school counseling programs on. And of course, we know we’re student focused.

6:41
We do everything through the lens of how is this best for students, or how are students different because of what we’re doing. But we need to let other people know how student focused we are too. I’ll link you to the Aska website where you can download some sample templates, press releases, images and logos. I think these will be a great starting point for more free ideas to follow along with this year’s theme specifically. You can also get creative with these and use AI tools like I talked about in last October’s episode 96 about using artificial intelligence to make you more efficient in your school counseling practice, this is a great place to do it.

7:17
With the right PR package put together during your National School Counseling Week, I hope you’ll be able to educate your people on the role that you do. Whether that sharing data, goals, successes, wins through your communication efforts others will know the large scale of things you’re doing to serve students day in and day out. My hope is that when you care about National School Counseling Week, others will begin or continue to care about school counseling and your role as a school counselor.

7:45
You have a responsibility to be a leader in your building, whether you believe you should be in that place or not. So whether you’re gasping for air or a life raft, or you’re currently steering the school counseling ship. National School Counseling Week is worth celebrating my friends. Let your voice be a little louder, stand a little taller, show off a little bit more than normal than you do the rest of the year. You can do it. I can’t wait to see what big impacts your small changes will make in your school.

8:15
Remember to head to counselorclique.com/challenge to grab your series of email templates for the high school counseling email advocacy challenge before we get into National School Counseling Week. If you’re looking for more templates, checklists and guides for your role as a high school counselor, and encourage you to check out the Clique Collaborative, my high school counseling membership and community. Learn more about that and join us inside by going to Cliquecollab.com. I’ll see you next week.

8:44
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of High School Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM at @counselorclique that’s CLIQUE. I’ll see you next week.