ASCA Day–At-A-Glance
My ASCA 15 experience started on Saturday. I arrived the evening before in order to
attend the pre-conference RAMP camp session. That evening I was able to make a
new friend from Colorado and meet up with some Twitter folks. We went for dinner at a local Thai restaurant
where we shared about ourselves and our schools and just enjoyed good food and
good company.
Pre-conference sessions started first thing Sunday
morning. I signed up for RAMP camp and
was so glad I did! Last year when I first
heard about RAMP camp I couldn’t imagine myself doing RAMP. But this past year has been an amazing time
of professional growth for me and I realize my school and I are ready to pursue
the Recognized ASCA Model Program designation.
It’s all about using data to inform your goals and programming for your
school and how to do it. I learned about School Counseling Advisory
Councils, creating yearly, monthly and
weekly calendars, and writing SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Realistic and Time bound). We also
covered action and results plans for class, group and closing the gap group lessons.
There were lots of great suggestions and tips
and a presenter and RAMP reviewer who were happy to have us contact them as
resources along the way as we pursue the RAMP process.
Building a Dream
Building a Dream
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| Ready to check out all the vendors and fill my treasure map! |
www.startheregoplaces.com/why-accounting
is a great career resource telling students about the world of accounting and
the huge demand for accountants in every type of organization. There are videos
and virtual field trips and a tab for educators with cool tools.
www.whatyouwant2be.org
with lots of free resources and downloadable curriculum for middle and high
school but I’m sure there are some things here I will be using with my 5th
graders , especially about sexting.
http://greatkindnesschallenge.org/ is a great website many of you probably
already know about. The Great Kindness
Challenge will be January 25-29, 2016. Go to
their website to register your school and download their kindness checklist and
free toolkit.
www.careergirls.org "Career Girls is a free, noncommercial, online platform which
showcases video clips of diverse women role models sharing career and
educational advice to inspire young girls to expand their horizons, improve
their academic performance and dream big about their futures. We are dedicated to providing girls of all income levels and ethnic backgrounds with the academic tools and support they need
to achieve their professional aspirations.”
These awesome, high quality videos and lessons plans are mainly for
middle and high school girls, however I can see using few of these with 5th
grade and possibly some of my 4th grade girls.
www.rightdecisionsrightnow.com free evidenced based program whose goal is to teach tobacco prevention. There are 3 instructional modules grades 5-6, grade 7, and grades 8-9. Go online to order your free tools.
http://www.glsen.org/educate/resources/lesson-plans lots of free lessons plans and educators guides for lessons on diversity, bullying, and bias. Check out information about no name calling week and the Ready, Set, Respect elementary tool kit to help all children feel safe and respected and to share those attitudes with others.
Monday Sessions at ASCA!
Let the learning begin! I have to be honest, it was tough to
choose between so many great sessions! There
were always 3 or 4 or more sessions going on simultaneously that I wanted to
attend. ASCA did a superb job of
gathering together an awesome selection of presentations.
My first choice did not disappoint. I
attended Technology Based College and
Career Lessons by Rebecca Lallier and Amy Wheeler. I knew this was the workshop for me when Rebecca
told us ahead of time to bring our devices so we could create. Then when I
heard her say, “This is not another fire hat, not another worksheet,” I knew I was in the right place. Anyone can
use her model to create units and not just about careers, but for any topic, at
any level.
Rebecca has created a website for her students called Career
Smarts. In her presentation she
explained the methods and tools she used and showed us how to create something similar. Using ASCA and Common Core standards Rebecca
set up a digital platform, and curated resources like career videos, state
colleges, information about multiple intelligence, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. She taught the lesson basics and then had the
students explore and create their own knowledge.
By creating the Career Smart site these ladies were able to
engage students in all modalities, differentiate learning, give kids an
innovative way to show their work, and build their tech skills. Students were also working on their reading,
writing, collaboration, and organization skills, all while learning them about
careers! Sounds amazing doesn’t it? Now before you get all excited and think this
is a ready-made site you can use for your students, you need to understand this
is closed site she created for her students with their work, so even in our
ASCA session we could not view or access the entire site due to privacy. The point of the session, to borrow from the
proverb, was not to give us a fish, but to teach us to fish and Rebecca and Amy
did just that. They talked us through
the entire process of how they created their site, gave us a list of awesome apps
they used, talked about using various web tools, curating videos and web resources, and then gave us a chance to begin
creating something of our own. If you
want to know more about “Career Smarts,” check out Rebecca’s blog at http://www.schoolcounselingbyheart.com/2013/07/20/creating-career-smarts/
In the afternoon I did a little session hopping as there was too, too much I wanted to see and hear. I stopped in at the Amazing Data Race: An ASCA National Model Scavenger Hunt with Jeremy Goldman, which was quite good but I had just been to RAMP camps and he was talking about much of the same things we had just covered the day before. So next I stopped in to see Dr. Carolyn Stone in her session on Critical Court Cases of the Last Decade. As always she is funny and oh so smart and well versed in the court rulings that impact School Counselors. When I arrived she was talking to a standing room only crowd about the Super Highway to Losing your Job. And even though I had heard her speak at my state convention in the Fall I had to stop in for a few minutes and listen.
I finally landed in 35 Creative Solution-Focused Strengths-Based Activities by Dr. Carol Buchholz Holland. She was wonderful and there were actually 47 strategies. I arrive at number 24 so I heard half of them. Here are some of my favorites:
#30 Skeleton Key activity: help a student identify past successes, use and old key as an anchor for a student to keep in their pocket as a reminder of past successes.
#33 Power Hands activity: students draw and outline both hands (get a friend to help) write or draw on each finger things they are good at doing. Spend time highlighting their strengths.
#36 Weathering Personal Challenge: divide paper in half and have student draw a difficult situation on the left side. On the right side draw what got them through the tough time. Have them caption how they made it through the tough time.
#38 Survive/Thrive Chart: have student think of a hard time, draw a T chart, label one side survive the other thrive. Have the student list or draw what they did to survive the tough time. On the thrive side, ask the student to list or draw what they do to grow/thrive. What has brought new meaning to their life?
My final session of the day was Games and Self-Assessments for Stress Management with Grace Wilhelm. There was no PowerPoint in this room, just a rapid paced and humorous session with Grace demonstrating how she uses regular board games as tools for stress management with individual students, groups, classes, faculty, parents, and community members. Games she uses frequently are Jenga, Don't Break the Ice, Kerplunk, Barrel of Monkeys, Topple, Spaghetti and Meatballs, Barking Bruno, and Connect 4. I especially loved how she used two of the games she shared with us, Jenga and Kerplunk.
Grace uses Jenga as a meet the counselor activity. For this lesson only, she asks the teacher to stay in the classroom with her to record the student responses. She numbers the Jenga blocks and calls out the numbers. As students come to the front of the room one at a time, they must say their name, where they live, who they live with and tell a story about a pet. All the while the teacher records this information. Grace says this is a good opportunity for the teacher to get to know her students a little better too. Once the Jenga tower is build she asks them to come up again and start taking the blocks out. She jokes with them that the longer this takes the longer they are out of math. Now when they come up to remove a block they must say what they want to be when they grow up.
Keplunk is used to talk about stress, but can also be used to talk about friendship or study skills or whatever you need it for. In Keplunk, the marbles at the top of the container are the stress points, the sticks in the middle of the container are the stress relievers. She asks what is something you can do to get rid of stress ? As the student names something they pull out a stick. Did that one thing release the stress? No. What else is something you can do? Pull out another stick, and continue to pull sticks for each stress reliever named by the student until the marbles are released. Did student get relief with one thing. No there are lots of things you must do everyday to get rid of stress. Marbles can also be points to make an A. Sticks are what I need to do to get an A. Marbles can represent friends. Sticks can be all the things I can do to make friends. To learn more about how Grace uses games and play check out her website at Counselor Games.
School Counselors After Hours
The sessions are over for the day and so what's a School Counselor to do? Now it's time to get out there and network with your follow School Counselors at the Meet-Up! You know all those creative, helpful people you talk to on the Counselor Facebook pages and tweet with on Twitter chats? Monday night was the time we all got to meet in person! Carol Miller, our Facebook page founder, organized our gathering and created a fun Bingo game card for us to use as a way to mingle and meet each other. It was great to actually talk face to face with the people I have been chatting with online and some I haven't. I even met some new School Counselor friends who are working overseas. What interesting jobs and lives they have! As the Meet Up wound down, I headed out to dinner with some of my new friends and later joined them for Trivia night in the ballroom. It was a full day and tomorrow promises more of the same. Stay tuned for part 2 of my ASCA conference highlights.
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| The talented Traci Brown so nice to meet you! |
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| Our awesome FB page creator and Meet-Up organizer Carol Miller. |
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| New friend and fellow elementary counselor Kelly. |
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| The "Meet-Up" Gang |
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