Here's What to Expect In This Episode:
Advisory programs are large-scale school interventions that lead students through social emotional lessons.
With this week’s guest, Leslie of Informed Decisions, we hear the dos and don’ts of starting and running an advisory program in your high school.
We talk about the importance of administrator, teacher, and student buy-in with strategies on how to combat the toughest stakeholders.
Leslie gives us expert advice on how to involve the whole school to make this a valuable and meaningful resource that you don’t want to miss.
(Implementing advisory programs as a school counselor is a completely different idea from advisory councils. Refer back to Episodes 16-19 for those.)
Topics Covered in This Episode:
- What an advisory program is and her background with
- How Leslie got started writing engaging multicultural classroom activities for students when she saw a gap and a need in her school’s advisory program
- Advice for counselors or social workers trying to start an advisory program in their school
- Why the quality of your program is important for your data collection from year to year
- Why your principal has to be the number one cheerleader and supporter of your program in order for everything else to fall into place
- The different types of “teacher stereotypes” you’re going to run into and how to work with all different types of responses
- Why high school counselors and teachers both have to take steps toward each other and meet in the middle to successfully facilitate these lessons
- How all of Leslie’s most memorable student experiences have taught her how to engage students well and better meet their needs
- Why letting students vote and pick the topics inspires student buy-in from the beginning
- How to define your high school counselor role in advisory programs and what you can be doing during the advisory program time
- Which types of advisory program schedules to stay away from
- Why having a prepared curriculum to hand to teachers is important
- Topics to avoid in your lessons
- The importance of cultural competency and classroom management
- A quick pep talk to give you the confidence you need to get started
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Informed Decisions Freebie: “What Would You Like to Discuss” Checklist
- Podcast: How to Use Data in Your High School Counseling Program Without Overthinking It
- Counselor Clique Freebie: Data Collection Ideas Guide
- Record your spooky counselor story here!
Other Blog Posts + Articles You Might Like:
Meet Our Guest:
Leslie is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW-R) who lives in Brooklyn, New York and loves providing educators with social-emotional and life-skills resources to engage multicultural youth populations!
She believes that together we can support youth in making informed decisions about their lives and futures.
She specializes in program development, advisory programs and social emotional learning, class push-ins, small groups, and working with court and gang-involved youth and teen moms.
Leslie loves working with teenagers because they say the funniest things!
Connect with Leslie:
- Blog
- Facebook Group: Advisory and S.E.L. Programs and Activities
- Instagram: @informed.decisions
- TpT Store
Be Featured in an Upcoming Episode:
I want to hear your SPOOKIEST counseling story: the one that makes you shudder to remember or makes you want to roll over in your grave of embarrassment.
It probably was a horror story THEN but maybe you’re ready to laugh about it now.
It could be a story so legendary that we wouldn’t believe it ourselves.
You don’t have to tell us who you are… just give us a 30-second story that will make us laugh and think… glad that wasn’t me.
All submissions will be kept anonymous!
Connect with Lauren:
- Record your spooky school counseling story: www.counselorclique.com/spooky
- Join my email list and get the free Data Collection Ideas Guide for High School Counselors
- Visit my TpT store
- Send me a DM on Instagram: @counselorclique
- Follow me on Facebook
- Send me an email
- Get on the waitlist for the Clique Collaborative
Cheers + Happy Listening!
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