Some of the Best School Counseling Advice I've Ever Heard

Hey there, school counselor, welcome back to the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, your host, a full-time school counselor just like you, on a mission to educate, empower and advocate for all the wonderful school counselors out there working their hearts and their guts out. That's an interesting description, isn't it? I don't know about you, but just about this time of year in the spring, as I'm recording this episode, the beginning of March is when things start feeling even more intense and more real than they felt all school year long. Are you with me on this? Folks seem to have shorter fuses. People seem to be a little bit more stressed. Typically, we see a large amount of testing coming down the pipeline. Student behaviors tend to increase. We just have a lot of things going on on our campuses this time of year and if you're anything like me, you could really stand an awesome dose of positivity mixed with reality to help you keep your perspective on your work. If you need something like that, today's your day, because I have the most wonderful guest to introduce you to. Her name is Jessica Neitsch, and she is actually one of my co-counselors in my school district. So for those of you wondering if I really am a full-time school counselor. If I'm really telling you the truth, this is proof positive. Jessica's going to be with me and it's going to be super fun, because I don't normally get to interview people that I hang out with in real life, right? So we'll see if she told any of my secrets. If she tattled on me, I didn't know what was going to happen when we recorded this interview, other than I knew she was going to blow your mind with her amazing perspective, and I was right. So, without further ado, I'm going to let Jessica tell you a little bit about her journey to becoming a school counselor.

So my undergrad which is a very long time ago I got my family studies degree and always wanted to be a counselor but never dreamed of going the school route of being a counselor. That's just kind of how it fell into place. I ended up going to grad school to get my elementary education, to kind of have a job. That was study, in order to figure out what I really wanted to do after college. But after working in the classroom for several years I realized that being a school counselor, that that's what I wanted to do, at least to start off with Just knowing that that need was growing for a school counselor, and not just the testing part of it, which is what a lot of school counselors are doing or have done the 504 part of it, knowing that not that part of it was the highest need, we are starting to see more of a need of the actual counseling and so just knowing that that part of the relationship building with students was what I really enjoyed as kind of what drove me to do that.

So, before we formally started this podcast interview, jessica and I were chatting about some things we might want to talk about in the episode, and one of the things she feels very deeply and strongly about are coping skills and social skills for kids that are coming from homes that aren't maybe quite as supportive as we would like to see. We're talking about homes of super busy, super overwhelmed parents who aren't super invested in whatever is going on with their kiddos, for whatever reason. Maybe they're just trying to survive or maybe they're disconnected. This is a true area of passion for Jessica making sure she can address the needs of students who are coming in without these social skills or without good self regulation skills. I asked her to talk about how it catches her attention and what she thinks we should do.

Well, I just feel like if these kiddos are going to be society members on their own later in life, they have to have those skills. You can't do anything, you can't go to further education, you can't go to a job, you can't do anything without social skills and emotion regulation skills. And unfortunately kids aren't always receiving those at home, and that's not at fault to parents, it's just the hustle and bustle of our world. Even at my house and I have one four year old, you know, sitting down at dinner and having a dinner together and talking about things is not a consistent practice in our house just because he has two working parents. And then you know, you look at, were parents equipped with teaching their children that? And I would say 80% of the time parents aren't equipped with those skills of teaching their children that and the importance of teaching their children that and so that kind of comes back on the school and that's not a bad thing, like that's okay that we need to shift our teaching a little bit, in my opinion, but we just have to recognize that that is an important teaching moment for children, especially at the younger age.

At this point we kind of detoured the conversation for a minute, talking about how it is so common for parents to not have the benefit of extended family around them or to have a really dysfunctional extended family around them that makes giving support to their children very difficult. I was talking about when I was a young mother. I had the benefit of being able to call my mom and ask for advice, ask for insight, ask for what she would do to approach certain situations, and how many of our parents don't have that benefit in their life so they feel like they're out there in survival mode all the time, just doing what they can, trying to make things work. Jessica had some further golden insights on families just working to survive the day.

Right. I mean, in my mind, survival is I just need to make sure I get food on the table, my child gets a bath most nothing and gets in bed at a decent time so they can survive the next day. I mean you have to have those needs met first, and so when that's our focus, then some of the other components that are still vitally important for us to live with other people on a daily basis, they're just not being explicitly taught in the home or explicitly modeled in the home. That doesn't mean that kids just don't learn those skills. That just means somebody else is needing to teach them those skills, and that falls on public education. And I think it's important, as we're evolving in education and evolving in society and how our society is now, we have to recognize where those gaps are, not just in education, not just in academics, but also socially, emotionally.

Y'all. Isn't that an amazing perspective, Isn't it a wonderful viewpoint that comes straight from the heart for serving students and serving families? I think you're seeing right now why I love Jessica so much and why I really look up to her in my day-to-day work. She has great perspective, she's doing this job for all the right reasons and I'm telling you, when you follow her lead, you can't go wrong. As we talked about survival, of course, the topic of conversation turned toward a feeling of surviving as a school counselor. With all of the things going on in our world, with all of the restrictions that we have in our work as well the lack of resources, lack of time, sometimes lack of understanding of our role it feels like we're working with our hands tied behind our back sometimes, doesn't it, and it makes our jobs challenging. So I asked Jessica for her perspective on that and how she handles it. What does she tell herself, what does she focus on when it feels like it's too much? Or what does she think about when she wants to make progress on her campus but it's just not going?

fast enough. Here's the deal. You're one person in an entire system of people on your campus, in your district, and we go on and on. And so, recognizing that, recognizing there is only so much I can do, right, but going to work every day and say, at least if I can do one thing that makes me feel like I've made progress with a kid, with a teacher, with a parent, whatever, if there's one thing that I can do that day, I try to practice. What I preach, and those are the two things that I often work on with kids, is the control circle what's in my control, what's out of my control. And then also, you know, finding five positives of the day, and so I really try to do that. When we journal with kids, I'm always like well, you gave me seven negatives, now you have to have double that to counteract. But they don't really like that very much because that's hard. So I've had tried to practice finding five positives every day. When it's been a really, really rough day, or several rough days, I try to do that and it's not a miracle worker, but it at least keeps you on the positive outlook, because that does a lot of good if you can be positive about whatever's going on.

Isn't this wonderful thinking about this in terms of a circle of control and also finding the positives in your day, Such valuable insight and advice and you know it's not anything you probably didn't know before, but it just hits different when you hear one of your colleagues talk about doing it too right. I added a thought of being mindful throughout your day. That's something that I personally focus on a lot, but Jessica had a different spin on being mindful through your day. Listen to what she had to say.

I love the thought of being mindful, but sometimes I think it's just me and my personality. Sometimes my mindful goes to oh my goodness, I shouldn't have handled it that way. So sometimes out of that it becomes negative and I think it's probably just my personality. So I try to focus on just five little short positives and then, you know, reflecting on those, but trying not to make my reflection become negative, like, oh, I could have done this different, or oh, I should have talked to that child differently. You know those sorts of things. Have you ever been there?

Have you ever felt that anxiety creep in when you're trying to be mindful, making you second guess everything you've done? Mindfulness is a skill, for sure, but I think Jessica has illustrated how it can go sideways for a lot of us, and I get it because I've been there too. The conversation turned a little bit about teachers learning to regulate themselves in their classrooms just because they have so much flying at them every day, and the expectation for teachers never stops. They're expected to be on from the moment they walk in the door in the morning until the moment they walk out in the afternoons. We had a really candid discussion about the need for better supports for our teachers and support staff on campus so that they can feel like they're more capable and can manage better regulation for themselves.

I think what teachers handle in the classroom is amazing. I think that they don't give themselves enough credit because they're not just teaching academics, they're not just meeting those teaks and getting those test scores. In fact, it's usually the lesser of what they're doing in their classroom, especially depending on what time of year. And then they have families of their own too, so they're balancing so many things and we don't give them enough credit. But we also don't give them enough support. I know some of the teachers joke at my school about me sending out, you know, taking a mental break for yourselves and being mindful and stuff. They always joke with me because I like to send them out. But I think they're so hyper focused on their kids and their parents. They're focused on their kids and their scores and their outcomes and the behaviors and all of those things that they don't take time to sit back and go oh, look what I did today. You know those five positives because they're doing a ton and they're doing a good job of it. It doesn't feel like that every day, but they're doing a really good job.

Kind of back to the idea of survival. You know, in survival mode you can't really think around you, around where you are or through where you are. You're just in the moment, all the time.

It's easy to get caught up in that. Right, I say this lightly, but our focus doesn't always have to be the academics, right? Like where are my students and what is their greatest need? I'll say this to them blue in the face academics will never come if some of the other components aren't there that relationship building, that emotional management by the teacher, by the adults and by the students. And if you know, if a kiddo isn't happy coming to school and it doesn't feel successful coming to school, then what do they have? They're there eight hours a day. What do they have, you know? But getting educators to buy into that has been my most difficult thing, right, because the pressures are on them from so many different places. Not because they don't want to believe it, don't believe it, don't understand. It's just they have pressures from all areas and sometimes that's not the easiest priority to set in the classrooms.

If you have a teacher or two on your campus that you feel like you're really struggling to communicate with, like they're just not getting it or understanding the importance of some of the things you might be asking them to do. I think this is a great perspective. In the conversation between Jessica and I, we started to compare this teacher survival with family survival that we talked about earlier, where families are struggling to make rent and get food on the table. Teachers, likewise, are working to get the scores, find the achievement, show the growth, because that's what school districts care about most right now. I mentioned that teachers got into teaching because they have a heart for kids, not because they love data extrapolation and giving tests, and Jessica had a few things to say about that too.

And that again is in a system out of our complete control, and so that makes it difficult because there's only so much control in that. You know, I was having a conversation in a meeting and I was just like, oh, control. So I started talking about control and how that affects anxiety because it affects mind big time and the adult in the room was like I've never thought of it that way. And so I just started looking at that control factor, which is one of my biggest weaknesses, and really trying to purposely tell myself what do I have control of, what do I not? Because when you really look at it that way, it takes a lot of the outside stressors that you don't have control over away. And so I try to be very purposeful about that with myself and with others that I'm talking with.

Speaking of things outside of our control, Jessica happens to be on a campus that is growing exponentially and faster than anyone in our school district could have predicted. She is literally being inundated by new students on the daily. I asked her about how she handles so many new students coming onto her campus, what considerations she gives for those new folks and how she manages all of that.

I really, really, really try to meet all new students Again. This year it's been a little bit more difficult because we've had a lot of new students since the beginning of the year. If I can't meet with them individually, trying to make sure I'm in their classroom for a little bit just to kind of see them, let them know that I'm there, it's a safe place, because moving to a new school is hard on kids. Hard on kids, not to mention what reason they're moving, if it's not just like hey, we've got a house, maybe we're having to move out due to family things, maybe we're having to move out for financial reasons. That's a stressor. But also having to meet new friends, that's really hard for kids. If I'm not the one meeting them, I really try to focus on somebody that can be a mentor to them. That's not their classroom teacher could meet them. Like hey, there's a student in room A, can you please go make a relationship and love on them, because I haven't made it around to them yet. You know those sorts of things and that's stressful whenever you have a whole lot of them, because sometimes you're like, oh, my goodness, I did terrible. This week we had five new kids. Only made it to three. You know that sort of thing and sometimes you pick up the pieces in different areas that aren't a counselor's area because you're on a team and you have to make it work and you have to make it happen and you know you may not get to all of your counselor goals that week, but you do it because you're on a team. Sometimes I don't do 100% of a counselor job because I'm a team player and it was communicated to me that these things needed to happen. These things we needed to get done. They took priority and we made it happen and I think that's important to show kids and other staff members and it kind of helps them get on board too with that mentality.

Y'all, isn't she smart, I'm telling you. This is why I love hanging out with Jessica any chance I get. As she was talking, she was making me think about that whole circle of control thing again and how we can apply that idea to our own situations. I think it's really smart. Her thoughts speak too to the idea that we don't have to be such rigid thinkers about our role on campus. We don't have to worry about what's in our lane and what's not in our lane because, to be quite frank, as school counselors we sort of get really stuck in that and sometimes we get resentful about it. We can get our feelings hurt if we feel like we're being misutilized or sometimes we get super militant about our job roles. I think it's because there's a lot of passion behind what we do and we are really invested in the idea of comprehensive programs because we know they're best for students. We believe in them. Yet sometimes I think we're not able to be flexible enough in our thinking or within our perspectives on our work.

Yeah, and going back to building that social communication aspect with your students. When you flip that as an adult, are we communicating with each other? Are we communicating in different groups on our campus in order for all students to be successful? Sometimes that means I'm decorating a Christmas tree in the hallway because we're having a lunch in tomorrow. Sometimes that means I'm going down to this classroom for 10 minutes to sit there while a teacher has to go talk to their own child outside. That's being helpful. Everybody has things that come up, and so I think, when we look at it on, this is our school building and what's going to be best for everybody. And I think it's really important to do that, because you could get so bogged down with oh my goodness, I didn't get enough time here. Oh my goodness, I didn't get enough time here. Oh my goodness, I didn't get up to all of my small groups, those sorts of things. Instead of getting bogged down on that, hey, overall, what did I do that benefited my teachers, my students I shouldn't say my our teachers, our students, our community as a whole. What did I do to benefit that? And sometimes that is decorating a Christmas tree in the hallway so that parents have a photo op when they come to the lunch the next day. I mean, sometimes it is that and just being able to be on board and get it done is really important, and that sometimes takes the redundancy out of your job too, right. But sometimes gives you a little breather or break Time to communicate with somebody that you're decorating the Christmas tree with, that you don't usually communicate with, just trying to find those positives of things that aren't your typical everyday assignment. I don't look at my job as an assignment. It's not an assignment, it's a service to students, it's a service to family, and when you look at it as a service and not an assignment, then it helps your outlook on it for sure. But if you're doing what you love, then it's not an assignment, right. And if you are doing it and it is an assignment, then you may not be where you need to be, because we should be in jobs that are serving others, and so I think that that for sure helps drive me every day.

Y'all I gotta be real. When Jessica talked about seeing her work as a service versus an assignment, y'all I literally got goosebumps. How powerful is that when we frame our work in that perspective? Just absolutely an amazing viewpoint. As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked Jessica what's something you would tell school counselors that you hope they would hold on to.

Well, I think this is going to be more than one thing, but number one is find your people. If your people isn't your administration, if your people isn't your office staff, find your people. That may be inside of work or outside of work, because you have to have a vent. Everybody has to have a vent and sometimes that vent is negative, and that's okay, because sometimes we just need to get the negativity out in one setting in order to not spread the negativity to others. It's okay to have your people that you do that to. So support system for sure. And then, second is finding your positives every day, because even in the bad days, even in the full moon days, even in the Thursdays and Fridays before Thanksgiving, christmas great, I mean, you know, I could name a hundred days that are not our favorite as educators Even in those days you can find positives. And sometimes you have to search a little bit harder, but when you do, you know that you are there for a purpose, because there's things that are positively happening. So those will be my two things.

Yo, I love that. Find your people and focus on the positive. On the surface it seems so simple, but we know if we can get really good at this, the effects are going to be profound. This is some of the best school counseling advice I think I've ever heard, and I'm not just saying that because Jessica is my friend. I really value her insights, her perspective on her work and the way that she inspires and empowers everyone around her to do their absolute best in helping kids reach their fullest potentials. School counseling is not for the faint of heart and, if March and the rest of the spring semester are any indication, we're in for a wild ride. But that's okay because we have each other and we have colleagues like Jessica out in the field supporting students, supporting families and helping us support each other each and every week. I'm so glad that you spent this time with us in this podcast episode and stay tuned because we have more awesomeness coming your way very, very soon. In the meantime, lean on your people, look for the positives and I hope you have the best week. Take care.