From the Classroom to the School Counselors’ Office: Katie Tells All

Hey there, school counselor, welcome back to another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast.

I'm Steph Johnson, your host, a full-time school counselor just like you, and I can't wait to introduce you to one of my new school counseling friends, katie.

Katie is a school counselor in a private Catholic school and she is completing her internship at the same time as she's beginning building a school counseling program.

She teaches a class on top of that, so this lady is busy, but you're going to fall in love with her because you can tell as she talks that she has so much heart in her work. She has such big visions and goals and dreams for her program and she has some great insights about what it's like to be a new counselor, what it's like to transition from being a teacher to a school counselor and what the future holds not only for her campus but for herself as a professional. Katie and I were chatting at the beginning of this interview and really didn't realize that we had started at all. We were just having a good time visiting and we'd entered kind of an impromptu discussion on faith and being where you're supposed to be, and that's where our conversation here in the podcast is getting started. I want you to hear what Katie has to say about these things, and listen as she tells you a little bit about her path toward becoming a school counselor.

I was going to say, talking about faith, like it really rung true to me as well when you said God pulls you in different directions that you didn't know you needed to go, like you're doing right now. That's exactly how I ended up in counseling. So I had no clue what I wanted to do after college or while I was in college I actually started doing the nursing route because that's what all my friends were doing, and I almost made it to clinicals and I was like you know what? I don't want to do this, and I want to make straight A's, so I'm going to study Spanish instead. And so I switched to Spanish major and I was like when I graduated I don't know what I'm going to do with this, so I'm going to teach. And then, with teaching, I was like I don't know if I want to keep doing this. And then I got pulled into the counseling office. So that's where I'm at now. We're a private high school and it's the only private Catholic high school in my town.

So we can imagine that being at a private Catholic school means it's probably kind of small, and when we work in private schools just in general, or in small towns, the rule about everyone pitches in seems to apply exponentially more than in other settings. I asked Katie if she's noticed that everybody has to do some things on her campus that they didn't really anticipate having to be responsible for when they got started, just to keep everything rolling at school.

Absolutely. We don't have a head office helping with transcripts or helping with curriculum and lesson planning. It's all on us and we do it all. Our situation is unique to the school that I'm at because in 2020, the same year as COVID we also had two hurricanes hit our town and completely destroy our campus. So we're all in temporary buildings. So, as you can imagine, we're trying to raise funds and try to get FEMA to pay for our new campus. So we're tight everywhere. So everybody's not just me.

Y'all did you catch that Two hurricanes, count them one. Two hit her town, completely destroying the campus. At the the same time, the whole entire world was dealing with COVID. I cannot even imagine the levels of trauma that are at play for not only students but everyone in the community. I asked her if it felt like everyone around her had been feeling like things were just completely out of control.

Absolutely, and that was when I was in the classroom full time and I noticed that's what I was doing. I was counseling kids through trauma as a teacher and that really spoke to me and I felt the rapport build with the students and, like man, I would much rather do that than discipline them for not wearing the right color shoes. So even though it was traumatic and it still lingers on like still a lot of students are in temporary homes or waiting to rebuild it still rings true that that started my passion, even though it was an unfortunate event.

With all these circumstances at play, with all of these traumas, natural disasters, pandemics going on, all while Katie's getting ready to launch her school counseling career, I asked her personally in transitioning from a teaching role to a school counseling role, in transitioning from a teaching role to a school counseling role, what has it been like and what have her thoughts or takeaways been as she's worked through all of these things?

The first year was the most intimidating. You know I always saw education as a teacher. I never saw exactly what the counselors did other than 504 plans or parent meetings and intervention. We upload our own transcript. That was a lot of work, a lot of learning curves, so that was a shocker of how to figure that out.

Scheduling and schedule changes that was also like the first two weeks being a revolving door and just feeling like exhausted. But the daily tasks, the little tasks that add up like my task list for being a teacher was grade period h papers and then now my task list in the counseling office is like a mile long and it's all a bunch of little tedious things. But the joy that I feel of having that rapport with the kids, it's just. It's what shocked me the most and it's what's keeping me going back. I actually went to a conference and one of the sessions was on boundaries and I came back and that was the first thing I implemented. I was like I need boundaries in this career because in teaching we have periods locked off where in counseling if you don't make those locked off times you don't get it. That was a shock too to.

Okay, pause for a minute. I really need you to hear what Katie said because I think it's super, super important. I can remember when I stepped into a counseling role, I heard the bells going off in the building, but I knew they weren't for me and it was such a weird feeling because I had been conditioned to teach bell to bell as a teacher. As you listen, you may know what I'm talking about. It's such a weird feeling to hear people moving around out in the hallways changing classes, following these schedules, but knowing that they weren't coming to me or leaving my classroom, and I thought what am I doing with myself right now? It was such a huge mental shift. I asked Katie if she experienced the same thing absolutely.

And at first it was like, oh my gosh, I'm free, I'm free to go party, I'm free to go walk and check on this kid, I'm free to move, like I felt kind of released from prison. It wasn't like a prison cell, but it felt like that. So yeah, the freedom, but also like OK, I don't know what period we're in, I have to do my schedule and I have to figure out how to do this. It's also scary, but fun.

Along the lines of escaping from prison. If you've moved from a classroom to school counseling, you may understand what we're talking about. I noted that one of the things I noticed was a lack of immediate oversight. Not that no one was paying attention to what I was doing in the counseling office, but as a teacher, moment to moment, you're super accountable for everything that's happening in real time. You have all these procedures and expectations to follow, curriculum points to hit, and on and on and on, Whereas in the school counselor's office it's still high stakes for students, but in a different way. I told Katie I remember thinking no one even knows what I'm doing right now. I could be doing literally anything in my office and no one has any idea what it is, and that felt really kind of strange and kind of ooky.

Yes, I can relate to that 100%. I felt that many times. If anybody listening to this considering transferring to the counseling department, that's something that should be prepared for. Almost Getting a vision from the principal of what she expects the counseling office to deliver. That was really what helped me. The first year I was in complete shock, just trying to learn everything, keep my head above water, but this year I have her vision in mind and I'm able to like I watched a ton of YouTube videos on how to use Google tasks and like really block things down and that's something to prepare for if you're transitioning Absolutely.

Oh my gosh. At this point Katie was speaking my love language.

The way she described her task lists almost sounded like task blocking in a way, so I asked her more about that. I'm trying that this year, because of the revolving doors and because of grad school, I have to get my schoolwork done plus plan for that one Spanish class. I'm still teaching, teaching plus counsel these kids. So if I don't do that I'm in over my head and not serving anybody for making any purpose out of what I'm doing.

When you walk into a school counseling program and you're not really sure how things work, you can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose. I noted that it's important to try not to overcompensate by trying to be all the things for all the people all day long as we're trying to prove ourself through this process. I was curious about some of the boundaries that Katie intended to implement from the conference that she mentioned earlier.

So the first thing I did was I printed out a close for lunch sign and I talked to the secretary and the other counselor and we all agreed that whenever we need time just to sit and eat, we're going to close the door for lunch. Some other things I looked at, like I said, the Google Tasks, and then also we started a program called SCORE. Have you ever heard of that? S-c-o-i-r? It's a college planning system and it's super helpful. It's where we send the students transcripts to colleges and they can do research and a bunch of other great tools on there. But on SCORE, one of the tools is that it's kind of like Calendly. Kids can schedule times by clicking on it through their account to meet with me one-on-one. It's definitely nice to have blocked off time for that as well.

One of the things that was very evident in the conversation I had with Katie was the thing that she loves most about school counseling, and that's building rapport with students. Katie strives to really build relationships and focus on students as their own people, not just a number on her campus. I'll bet that might be one of your favorite things about school counseling too, so I asked her how does she do it, how does she get to all those students and how does she build rapport with them all?

I want to talk to everybody. One-on-one is my goal this year. I have about 250 students. I've already done all seniors knocked them out first because I wanted to get to know their plans for after high school, and then I'd like to just start with juniors and work my way down. So really meeting one-on-one, face-to-face. I don't know if I'm in over my head on that one, but it's working so far and I'm keeping track too, and the students see me keeping track that I'm meeting with all seniors one-on-one, and a couple of them were like oh my gosh, you're actually making sure that you're checking in with all of us. I'm like absolutely, that's my job, that's my favorite part of the job. Whenever we come back, I have some juniors and seniors that want to start a kindness club with me. So we're going to kind of spread that positivity and rapport throughout the campus, hopefully.

That's inspiring to me, just like it is for Katie's students, and I think even if you're carrying a caseload larger than hers, if you're serving more than 250 students, this can still be done in some capacity. Perhaps you can break it down into student interest groups and work really diligently on building rapport there. First, perhaps you can start with a certain grade level or alpha, whatever it is. Get out there and build those connections. Before we started recording the podcast, katie told me that she cared deeply about acknowledging who a person is and what their path after high school honestly looks like. I asked her to tell me what she meant when she mentioned what students' paths honestly look like. What does that mean?

So of course we know that there's different routes. You know, going straight into the workforce, going to technical school or four-year school, military whatever your route may be, it's going to be looking different from somebody else's. And I think too, being in a private school, it's assumed because everybody in our private school is on college prep. So the idea is that everybody goes to college. But I had a senior come in the other day and she was crying and I was like is everything okay? And she's like I'm just really happy and scared because I've decided I'm not going to college, I want to go into real estate and I don't like school.

And this is a student that's struggled a little bit. But the joy that she felt and the release that she felt from knowing that it's okay that her path is going to look different from her friends and we talked about too, like how she can still get with her friends and have some of those experiences, but she's on a different path she was able to recognize that and that joy and relief, to know that you are driven for something and it doesn't have to be the same as your friends is what I'm after for all those kids, if it brings you joy and that's what you know you want to do, then that's what you should do. I read a book last summer I'd like to recommend. It's called Saving Sycamore. It's written by a school counselor who prevented an on-campus shooting because of her rapport with a student, and it just goes to show that relationship is everything.

Oh, my goodness y'all. When Katie described that book, I felt electricity shoot down my spine. I haven't had the privilege of reading it yet, but I know lots of school counselors have recommended the book Saving Sycamore. So follow Katie's advice and pick it up. I know I am, and I think it may be a contender for our summer mastermind book study. So if you're interested in diving into it with us, we'll have details for you here at the end of the episode. As we started to wrap up our conversation, I noted that Katie has already started to change campus culture, even though she really just got started on campus.

Yes, I hope I'm making some changes. I feel more driven to do this than I ever have. I always think of, like I think it was a president or somebody with the quote about a boat like the president can steer the boat, but only turn it slightly If it's a big ship, like it's going to take a while for it to turn all the way around. That's what I feel like I'm doing, because they can small little turns.

Y'all, isn't Katie awesome? She is wonderful. We need more folks in school counseling offices who feel that same sense of purpose and that drive in feeling like I'm meant to be here. There may be hard days, there might be days that just totally suck, but you know what. I'm meant to be here and I am going to be a changemaker. And that's what she is. She's a changemaker and I want to thank Katie for her inspiration and insight in this episode of the podcast. And I know you're probably a changemaker too.

After all, we are not led into this profession if we do not care about changing hearts and minds in schools, about cultivating great students and amazing citizens. Right, it's just such an awesome opportunity to change the world and sometimes we may feel it's a small contribution or we may feel like it's overwhelming, but y'all, bit by bit just like turning that ship in the channel, we're making a difference and we're changing the trajectory of lives. It's pretty incredible if you think about it. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode. It's been so much fun bringing you interviews from your school counseling colleagues. I never fail to learn something myself and to be inspired and motivated for the week to come.

I mentioned earlier, we do have a summer book study coming up soon in our School for School Counselors Mastermind, as well as our monthly masterclasses, monthly data, cohort meetings and weekly support and consultation chats Y'all. There's a lot going on over there in that world and I would love for you to come check it out with us. You can go see all about it Schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash mastermind. If you have any questions, give my team a holler at hello at schoolforschoolcounselorscom. We would love to answer any questions you have about this amazing community of some of the smartest school counselors I've had the privilege of ever knowing.

All right, we're going to wrap this episode up for this time, but I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, if you feel inspired or motivated yourself, hop on over to Apple Podcasts, leave us a review or follow us in your podcast platform of choice. We would be so indebted to you and you're gonna get all the new episodes as soon as they're released, so it's a win-win right. Head over there and hit subscribe or follow in your podcast platform of choice and I will see you again very, very soon. Have the best week, take care.