National School Counseling Week: 5 Forgotten Ways to Promote Your School Counseling Program [Episode 59]

Welcome to this week’s episode of high school counseling conversations. National School Counseling Week is coming. It’s next week actually. This year National School Counseling Week is February 6 through the 10th. I’ll give you a few days to listen to this episode and think on it that you can implement a few quick and easy ideas next week that don’t take too much effort but still leave an impact and a meaningful mark on your school counseling advocacy efforts.

Before we get too far into this, I want to start with my hot take on National School Counseling Week. This is not called counselors week. It’s not called National School Counselor week or counselor week. If you have this mindset, then you will wonder why isn’t anyone celebrating me? And that’s not what this week is all about at all.

Sure. It’s nice to be recognized. I will not argue with you about that. But if you’re holding our breath waiting to be showered and flowers and your favorite Starbucks order you might pass out from lack of oxygen. I’m just saying. Just like I don’t know, a national principals day secretary’s day school nurses day media specialist day, they don’t know of a specific day to celebrate me.

So instead of feeling down about being forgotten, reframe your mindset, because that’s not what this week is about to begin with. Remember? Sorry if this feels like a swift kick. ASCA defines National School Counseling Week as a time to focus public attention on the unique contribution of school counselors in US school systems, especially highlighting the tremendous impact school counselors have in helping students achieve school success and plan for a career.

That was a mouthful, but it is straight off of their website I’m telling you like it is. I’ll link for you in the show notes, the free ASCA

downloads and templates that they put out to help you plan for your week, including a promotional toolkit specific to this year’s theme, which is helping students dream big. Here are five simple ways to celebrate National School Counseling Week this year. I’m calling it five forgotten ways to promote your school counseling program because they are really simple. Pick one of them or pick all of them. Every little bit of advocacy helps. Let’s jump into number one.

High School Counseling conversations is a podcast where we talk about exactly that. A casual potpourri of school counseling topics intended to grow with a school counselor, but also give us space to enjoy each other’s company. I’m Lauren from counselor click and I’m sharing my experiences and perspectives as a high school counselor.

No topic is off limits. And I’m certain we’ll cover it all. I’m 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. Whether you’re just getting your feet wet as an intern, or you’re nearing retirement, you’ll feel like you’re just popping in to catch up with your school counseling bestie. Let’s go.

Use social media to join the fun of National School Counseling Week. Whether you’re just checking in to see what ASCA is doing and commenting on their channels. Or maybe you are sharing some of your own wins on your own personal account, or you’re using your school channels to drum up some hype. There’s room for so many different uses for your social media during National School Counseling Week.

In Episode 48, I talked about a few tips for social media for your school counseling program. Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or advanced user. Pop back over there if you need a deeper dive into social media for your school counseling program, I’d say that my favorite way to use it during this week is just advocating on your pages.

Repurpose that content post the same thing on your Instagram as you post on Facebook and vice versa. You can post facts about law school counseling profession, share data from your program, give some Did you know type stat. You could share pictures of events you put on last semester, ask questions and use the Instagram story features in your stories to get your followers engaged with what you’re up to.

If you don’t have social media accounts yet for your school counseling programs specifically, see if you can give the Social Media Manager for your school’s accounts, some content, like I’m talking pictures, videos, captions ready to go for them, so they can just post it for you.

You can also do a takeover on their social media. Have you ever seen one of those? Get in their stories talking about school counseling with your actual face if that’s not too scary, check other school counseling programs in your area so that you can celebrate together.

Tag your school district or higher ups to see the good things that you’re doing. There are so many ways that you can leverage social media for National School Counseling Week that will lead to advocacy efforts for your program.

I’m interrupting this episode to talk about something that doesn’t need to be scary, but it inevitably is…graduation. Make this season less daunting and less stressful and use my graduation credit check spreadsheet as one more touch point to make sure your students have what they need to graduate.

Use this spreadsheet with its pre populated formulas over and over again to make sure they’re set and ready to walk across that stage. Go to counselorclique.com/graduation to see what’s inside this fancy graduation credit check spreadsheet. It’s the solution you’ve been looking forward to keep yourself usually organize this graduation season. That’s counselorclique.com/graduation. Now, back to the show.

Next, use your advisory council. If you already have a time scheduled to meet with them around National School Counseling Week, great. If not, you can still use them as an advocacy piece, especially if you’ve already laid the groundwork and they’re fans of your program. Reach out to them with some of this PR stuff. Tell them about National School Counseling Week. You can even record a video on your phone and attach it to an email to them.

Make them feel special for being a part of the Advisory Council. It’s a great time to thank them for that. But also ask them to help spread the word that it’s National School Counseling Week. Give them some images and texts that they can share on their Facebook pages. If you don’t get an opportunity to be with them in person around National School Counseling Week, you could give them an update on how things are going this year and hit some highlights that you’re proud of.

Or, when you do get together later in this year. Remember to come back to them and share what you did during National School Counseling Week. That’s something that we forget about when we’re hitting the highlights of our program for our school counseling Advisory Committee. I’ll give you some more tips on what to put in an email to them in this next tip.

No rhyme or reason to why I’m putting my favorite tip for promoting National School Counseling Week in the middle of the episode. It just flows best after leveraging your advisory council, I think. I have a free resource that’s super popular because it’s so easy to implement. Use my email templates for a plug and play advocacy effort for National School Counseling Week. You can really use it at any time during the year but I created it for this week specifically.

I call it my four day email advocacy challenge. Though I don’t think it’s that challenging. You just need to challenge yourself to actually do it. Sign up for your free email templates at counselorclique.com/challenge to get those templates to your email. Inside. Once you receive those, you’ll get ideas for showing off your data, your goals, your role, and so much more. You can also use these email templates in our next tip.

Next, utilize your school announcements. If you’re feeling bold and saucy, you can be the one who hops on the Announcements and you could do it yourself. If you’d like to stay behind the scenes, let the regular school newscaster or the news anchors read it. You can use bits and pieces from your staff advocacy emails, or you can use ASCA templates from their promo kit. That’s the same link I mentioned earlier in this episode. They don’t have lots of super specific long announcements for every day of the week.

But maybe you could use their one sample announcement which is on page six of their toolkit if you’re looking at it, and then elaborate on your more school specific ideas that you want to get across to your students on the different days. Maybe you could talk about who their counselors are, I mean, who you are, what you do, how they can find you how students set up an appointment with you common concerns that students might see a counselor about.

You can explain individual group and classroom counseling. You can explain individual counseling, small group counseling, and classroom lessons. The list goes on and on. Are you ready for the fifth and final, often forgotten way to promote your school counseling program during National School Counseling Week. Just keep doing your job with integrity like you always do. This has permission to not host a big event or get down to the big shindig, but instead just keep doing your job well.

Relish in the fact that you are an amazing school counselor who gets to serve students in a unique way in your school setting that a lot of other adults don’t. It’s an honor and a privilege if you ask me. National School Counseling Week is just a fun way to get to tell others about how much you love what you get to do.

Decide what you can do right now in your current capacity in your current season. And then ditch the rest. I love hearing about the amazing things you’re doing as a high school counselor in general. So it’s extra special when you get to toot your own horn during the celebratory week. Don’t be shy, share it all far and wide.

The work you do matters and I will be here telling you that over and over again every time you come and listen to this podcast. As we near the end of this episode, I want you to remember to head to counselor click.com/challenge to join my four day High School Counseling email challenge to receive those email templates that you need to celebrate National School Counseling Week in the easiest way possible. Dare I say it?

Tag me in the things that you do to celebrate this year. I’d love to reshare them over on Instagram with other high school counselors who are following along. I’ll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to today’s episode of high school counseling conversations. All of the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselor click.com forward slash podcast. Be sure to hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode.

Connect with me over on Instagram. Send me a DM at counselor click that CLI Q U E. Thanks so much for hanging out with me. I’ll see you next time.