Teaching and Guidance Counseling

A paperless guidance office would change my role from that of a paperpusher to one of facilitator of learning, a guide on the side as students and parents take in and interact with the information we have for them.  If the guidance office went paperless, we would save a ton of money that could be used for other services.  There is no reason why parents and students could not register for school online.  Any communications with the school, can be done on email or through our Blackboard Internet system.  Parent permission slips for many things can be done online: registration for gifted testing, changes in class schedules, permission for group or individual counseling.  Invites for special events can be posted online.   Other areas of information that can be put online are:  Developmental guidance lessons, parenting strategies, Strengthening Families pod or video casts, Family Home Evening ideas, things to do with your at-risk students, summer activities, teenage job leads, college and  career search links, surveys, and resource information for parents, teachers, and students.  Information would be out to parents, students and staff in a more timely manner and feedback would be received quicker. 

Students who interact with guidance curriculum on Wikis and Blogs will retain more information than if they just sat and listed to a counselor lecture.   Learning would be measured by choices the students make as they apply guidance curriculum principles.  The students would create a learning community that would enrich their learning as they apply what they learned and write about the results of their choices,and the ideas they have about those results.   I would feel more comfortable as a guidance counselor if I knew that I was reaching all my staff, students and parents with the correct guidance information if we communicated with Web 2.0 technology tools instead of paper.  Web 2.0 tools facilitate a two-way communicationn in a much more user friendly way. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Guidance Counseling

Service Delivery from the Guidance Office is seeing big shifts:                                     

Students in my middle schools are no longer just readers of or listens to information put out by guidance counselors. Within the password protected Blackboard site our District has set up for me for guidance curriculum, we have Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Videocasts, Email, Homepages, Calendars, Discussion Boards, Questions forums, Guidance PowerPoints, Articles, etc. Our students are able to interact with the information we post and with each other as they share their thoughts, ideas, and suggestions for application of guidance curriculum. Because we have more than one middle school, we are able to put students in touch with students from other buildings within a safe internet system. As students learn that our site is a Read/Write site we are getting more and more participation.

 Right now I am doing a project with my 8th grade gifted students on Blackboard. We are using the message system, discussion board, Blogs, Wikis, course documents, etc to learn more about the 7 Habits and how they can be applied. I have three middle schools so my time in each building is limited. Being able to communicate with students through Blackboard enables me to better meet their needs. In the future, I can see doing group counseling through password protected Wikis or chat rooms within our system. 

When I first started learning about Web 2.0 technology in the classroom, my brain hurt and I thought this would be over my head. After only a few weeks of training, I see Web 2.0 tools helping me provide great  service my students more effectively. Using technology in the guidance office is a shift that my colleagues were originally surprised by and resistant to. Now after seeing what I am doing, they want a guidance page set up for our whole Guidance department so they can do what I am doing. The more students we reach out and help students and their families, the more other staff will see the usefulness of Web 2.0 technology in all areas of education.

Tags: beejan08pls, Guidance Counseling, Instructional Strategies, Web 2.0

Guidance Counselors should make Podcasting part of their approach to developmental guidance counseling.  The National Standards for School Counseling can give you the framework you need to start your developmental guidance program.  The standards contain a multitude of topics that you can use in your Podcasting.  These Podcasts need to be timely, pertinant, interesting, concise and show that you know your audience  (5 to 10 minutes at the maximum). 

Ideas for Guidance Podcasting include:

• Students telling their experiences and advice for transitioning to a new school or grade level.

• Guidance Counselors recording interviews with students about Time Management, Study Skills and Test Taking Strategies.

• Guidance Counselors recording the upcoming calendar of college speakers, standardized tests, or other guidance activities.

• Guidance Counselors giving strategies for dealing with stress, decision making, goal setting, implementing the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, and bullying.  bullying.   CAS007 - Bullying: Intervention Strategies for the Victim and Bully w/ Dr.  Walter B. Roberts.  Airdate 2/16/2006.   I would recommend using this Podcast in staff development or with students in small group or individual counseling as you work with the bullies, bystanders, or the targets.   

• Guidance Counselors recording presentations for students or parents who could not attend (this may need to be longer than the 5-10 minutes maximum-it depends on the content and who the presenter is).

 The easiest way to begin is to create a podcast or vodcast (video podcast) of  a presentation or topic you have already worked with for years.   Check out Podcasts for Educators, Schools and Colleges for help getting started.    The Counselor’s Podcast™, a service of the Naviance Network™, features leading voices from the  school counseling community speaking on topics of professional interest.  The CounselorAudioSourse.net is another great site for examples of  School Counselor Podcasting. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Bullying, Guidance Counseling, Parenting Teens, Podcsting

As part of our unit on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, we are setting up a Wiki site on our in district Blackboard.   Working on a Wiki for the BCE PLS graduate course, inspired me to get my students to work on a Wiki as we put together our interactive multimedia project on the 7 Habits.  Creating a Wiki as a group has many challenges:  Timing, who does what, how much latitude to take as you make updates to someone else’s submission, how far to go in initiating new pages, etc.   I learned that anyone can make changes and that if you do not like them you can discuss it in the discussion page.  I also was happy to learn about restoring previous pages if you make a mistake to the page you are working on.  Wiki’s are not as overwhelming as I thought when I first looked at it this week.  Practice makes things go smoother. 

I was surprised last Saturday when I brought up Web 2.0 technology at the lunch table with other SAT proctors.  They were all resistent to the new additions to the district Blackboard page because they saw  having to Wiki and Blog as a burden instead of a help.  More training needs to be done so that they and others feel comfortable and move forward in their use of Wiki’s and Blogs.  My response is always to ask for more staff development classes.  We are actually, on Tuesday,  having a class that will teach district staff about Wiki’s and Blogs that can be done within our Blackboard system.   I plan to attend and learn as much as possible. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Guidance Counseling, school counseling

The Emotional Bank Account is a useful way to consider the relationships which contribute to your success. Think of it in the same way that you would an actual bank account. If you deposit money in the bank, the bank pays you interest and your account continues to grow. If you withdraw money from the account too often, your account will shrink quickly. 

In the same way, your relationships with teachers, teammates, coaches, parents and friends can be thought of as individual bank accounts. You can either make deposits to build and strengthen the relationship or you can make repeated withdrawals from the relationship and cause it to fall apart. This is the idea behind the Emotional Bank Account.

 Relationships take time to build, and strong relationships are based on many Emotional Deposits over time. What is an Emotional Deposit?

Unfortunately, it is much easier to damage or destroy a relationship than it is to build and improve one. Making one withdrawal from a friendship can erase many months of hard work making deposits. Some Emotional Withdrawals might include:

We all want to have friends, and we all want to be well liked. Understanding the Emotional Bank Account and making repeated deposits in your relationships is the key to being trusted and liked. And when you are trusted and liked, your Circle of Influence expands!

Please comment to me about your experiences applying the Emotional Bank Account Concepts. 

 This information is adapted directly from the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, by Steven Covey. Please read the real book, or one of the many companion books in the series.

Tags: , Deposits, Emotional Bank Account, Guidance Counseling, Relationships, Teens, Withdrawals