Top 5 Posts of 2014

Being a relatively new blogger,  (I have only been blogging for 6 months) I am still learning what to do and when to do it.  I see my fellow, more experienced, bloggers reviewing their top posts for the year, so in true elementary school fashion, "monkey see, monkey do!"  If you missed these posts, I hope you will find something here of value if not now (since the top 3 have to do with starting the school year) perhaps in the future.

#1  New Counselors: 12 Tips and Resources for Starting a New School (Year)
Here you will find 12 tips and resources for starting a new school or a new school year. Whether you are a counselor with your first job, or someone with experience starting a new school, I hope you will find these ideas and resources helpful in getting your School Counseling program off to a great start!

#2 Meet the Counselor:  How to Make a Counselor Catcher
This year I was interested in doing something different with my fifth graders for their "Meet the Counselor" lesson. So I thought I would let them tell each other what a School Counselor does, but it had to be in a fun and engaging way. Since only 4 of my 72 fifth graders were new this year and all of those had come from local schools with School Counselors, the "Counselor Catcher" was born.

#3  Sharing Red Ribbon Week Lessons
Between Red Ribbon Week and Bully Prevention, I think October is one of the busiest months for School Counselors.  Each of these topics are important in the healthy physical and emotional development of our students.  But both in one month?  It is hard to give either topic the spotlight it deserves. The planning and implementing of lessons, programs and activities is time consuming. So, I thought I would share five of my favorite Red Ribbon Week lessons.

#4  Google Forms:  Collect  and Analyze Data to Advocate for your School Counseling Program
The Google Form here is a compilation of duties and responsibilities shared with me by my School Counselor colleagues from the Facebook group The Elementary School Counselor Exchange. The variety of  unrelated duties represented in this form have been assigned to School Counselors leaving them, in many cases, without the time or support to pursue relevant school and student needs.   It is my hope that School Counselors can use this form to demonstrate, with data and visual representations of graphs, how their time is being spent, both in an effort to create change and to show progress towards that change.
If you are interested in learning more about creating your own Google Forms check out my post with Step by Step Instructions for Creating Google Forms.


#5  8 Steps to Developing, Implementing, and Supporting a Student Behavior Plan
My intern and School Counselor "mentee" tell me,  "We did NOT learn this in graduate school!" And neither did I.  I learned from old fashioned trial and error and many times it was not pretty!  While I do not claim to have all the answers, I do have some experience in this area and have been designing and implementing plans with my teachers for more than 10 years and I am happy to share what I have learned.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has visited my site and shared comments of encouragement and thanks! I have enjoyed sharing with you all.  If there are topics or ideas you would like to see a post about, leave me a comment with your suggestion or idea.  I am looking forward to sharing more in 2015!