Counselors' Corner

The Real-World Politics of Schedule Changes

2012-02-29T10:12:00.001-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D

I’ve decided it’s time to amend the United StatesConstitution.

From now on, the only people who get to vote are schoolcounselors.

This thought came to me after three weeks of nonstop phonecalls to my house from presidential candidates. After listening to the logic and claims they were making to try andsecure my vote, I was sure I had been exposed to this interesting kind ofbanter before—and, sure enough, I had.

“Dr. O’Connor?”

“Hi James.”

“I came in because I need to change my schedule.”

“Really? Didn’t wejust change it three days…”

“Yeah, we did, an issue has come to my attention thatdemands an immediate change of course in my educational objectives.”

“Really? In threedays?”

“It came to me like a vision in the night. I’m destined to be an engineer and leadsociety to a better world.”

“Through engineering?”

“Absolutely. So if you’ll just sign this drop and add slip…”

“James, you’re asking to drop Algebra 2.”

“Yes. That is myintention.”

“But engineers need Algebra 2. In fact, you’ll need to take Calculus bysenior year.”

“That information flies in the face of the consensus of mysupporters.”

“Your supporters?”

“Yes. My mother tellsme that leading engineers are more in touch with their creative side than thosewho have studied the tired theories of the past, and my uncle is an engineerwho doesn’t even remember the quadratic formula.”

“Wow. What kind ofengineer is he? Civil? Chemical?”

“No. He works forAmtrak.”

“But that’s not the kind of –“

“Dr. O’Connor, I really need your support to make thislasting change that will lead to a brighter future for all.”

“From Algebra 2.”

“Right.”

“To Ceramics?”

“If it weren’t for ceramic engineers, we’d never have thetiles that created the heat shield on the space shuttle, the world-knownfountain at Metro Airport, or that really cool toilet in the teacher’s lounge.”

“How do you know about—“

“I have my sources, Dr. O’Connor.”

“So you’re telling me this change is in the best interest ofyour educational well-being?”

“Not just mine, Dr. O’Connor. It’s for the good of all.”

“Including Amanda Bailey, I assume.”

“Sorry—who?”

“Amanda Bailey. Thegirl who asked you to the Sadie Hawkins Dance out of the blue?”

“I am acquainted with Amanda.”

“She has French 2 during the period you want to takeCeramics.”

“Interesting.”

“James, students in French 2 have first lunch, and so doesCeramics.”

“And?”

“Algebra 2 has second lunch.”

“Dr. O’Connor, I’m really not prepared to address that issueat this time. If you’d just sign thisdrop and add slip—“

“Tell you what, James. Why don’t you leave it with me, and I’ll run this request by a focusgroup.”

“A focus group?”

“Yes. Your mathteacher, the assistant principal, your mother, Amanda’s mother. Once I have consensus, we’ll all have abetter sense of how to proceed.”

“Actually, Dr. O’Connor, I think it might be prudent tosuspend my plans at this time.”

“I think that’s wise, James. Better your plans get suspended then, oh, say, something else.”

“Or someone else.”

“Exactly.”

Everybody Needs Their Space—Especially Counselors!

2012-02-21T19:36:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D

Every counselor has an ideal office, complete with four big windows looking out on a beautiful garden, three secretaries, and classical music playing in the background.

Since we all don’t live in that world, it’s important to keep these points in mind when evaluating the office you have, and considering how it could be better:

The key is student access to information. Many counselors like to see papers in folders and books placed neatly on a shelf—but how does that make the information accessible to students waiting in the office? Your physical space has to be student-centered; every student should leave your office area with more ideas about themselves and their world than they had when they came in, no matter what they came in to talk about.

This doesn’t always mean students have to have access to you. Thanks to counseling Web pages, Facebook pages, the morning PA announcements and more, students don’t always have to see you to get the information they need. Look at your counseling Web site and ask yourself, What help does this give to your students and parents? Better yet, buy four students a pizza and ask them this question while touring your Web site at lunch.

Remember the liquid rule. Counselors have been trained to hold on to information, and that’s very important when it comes to issues that require confidentiality—but how confidential is information about summer programs, college visits, and other information for the public good? This information is water to students thirsty for college knowledge—let it flow into every estuary you can create, in the office, online, or otherwise.

How much assistance do you have? It’s going to be tough to keep a Web site current if you have to print every transcript, and keeping a local scholarship file up to date is pretty hard if you have 700 students. Be good to yourself --think creatively about the kinds of volunteers you can use to expand the reach of your office. There has to be one parent out there who would love to keep that Web site open, and another who wouldn’t mind putting scholarship applications on a spreadsheet. Use your resources.

What spaces are available? Your office and waiting area probably have all kinds of counseling materials up and around, but what about the main office, or that empty bulletin board in the English hallway, or that 30 minute slot on the local cable TV show once a month? If you took 10 minutes to think of where you could be spreading the college word, you’d surprise yourself at just how big your office can be.

How much delegating can you do? If computers aren’t your thing, give the Web site to someone else; if you don’t have time to put the Career Night flyers up in local businesses, call the Chamber of Commerce, or the National Honor Society. If your filing is driving you crazy, a retired educator in your town is dying to give back. Getting bigger sometimes means letting go…

How much delegating can YOU do? …and to do that, you have to be honest with yourself. Does it really matter what color the napkins are for the cookie reception after Financial Aid Night? You need to shape what the flyer for your test prep program says—but do you have to decide what it looks like? Many hands will make light work, as long as you aren’t holding them all the time, or holding them back. Be good to yourself, and help others help you.

FAQs on Financial Aid

2012-02-15T17:21:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

You’re in the middle of scheduling, it’s almost February Break, and now students are getting financial aid offers. How can you help them?—why, with this:

Remind me again. What’s the EFC? EFC stands for Expected Family Contribution. This is what you and your family can afford to pay for college, at least according to Congress. This figure is based on the information you provide on your free federal aid application, FAFSA.

What do colleges do with this number? They use your EFC as the starting place to build your financial aid package. If your EFC is $8000, and the college costs $15000 to attend, the college will try to find the $7000 you need to go there. If College B costs $20000 to attend, they’ll try to find the $12000 you need to be a student there. If College C costs $6000, they won’t be finding any money for you, since FAFSA indicates you can pay that much on your own.

My EFC is way too high—there’s no way I can afford this much for college. What can I do? If you have a money issue FAFSA doesn’t take into consideration, financial aid officers can use “professional discretion” and offer more financial support. This is one reason why some colleges offer you more aid than others. Be ready to provide documentation to support your situation, and don’t be afraid to ask.

How do colleges help me pay for college? Most colleges offer three kinds of financial aid: Grants, or money you are given that you don’t have to pay back under most circumstances; Work study, where you take a part-time job at the college to pay off part of your tuition; loans, where you’re offered a low-interest loan you usually don’t have to start paying off until you’re out of school.

Will my financial aid be mostly loans? Over the past ten years, more and more colleges are giving bigger loans as a part of financial aid, while other colleges have eliminated loans all together. If loans are part of your financial aid package, ask the college about the terms of repayment, and make sure you look at other options.

Like what? This is where private scholarships can be a big help. If you win a $500 scholarship from your local chamber of commerce, you should report it to your college. Most colleges (that’s most colleges) will then take $500 off of the loan part of your financial aid package. They’ll keep doing this until your loan part is gone, so look for those private scholarships—they can make a huge difference!

Do I have to accept an entire financial aid package, or can I just take the grants and work study? You have the right to take, reduce or turn down any part of a college’s financial aid offer. Students often turn down the loan portion, or accept only part of it, and decide they will work more during summers and weekends. Other students decide not to take the work study part of the package, at least for first semester—this gives them a chance to focus on their studies.

Do colleges have to meet all of my aid? Unfortunately, many colleges don’t have enough money to meet 100% of the financial needs of all students, and other colleges don’t meet all of your need as a strategy to see if you can’t pay more of your own way. Many colleges will advertise they meet all need as an incentive for students to apply; if you don’t know, ask.

Scheduling Classes for Next Year? It’s Time Your Students Got Plowed

2012-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Like most dedicated school counselors, I have another job that pays for the privilege of being dedicated to my counseling job. I teach American government at a local community college to a group of what we counselors would call “reluctant clients”, since the class is required to get any college degree.

I keep this in mind when I first address the class. “I realize that if this class wasn’t required, you would be at home in bed right now, and I would be standing on the freeway holding a sign saying ‘I will teach you about the Electoral College for food.’”

This brings chuckles from a few students (who are given As for the semester right then and there), so I quickly add “I know this class may not be your first choice. But the college requires you to take this class because our country needs you to engage in the job you will have for most of the rest of your life—active participant in the governance of the United States of America.”

This month, thousands of counselors are working with reluctant clients in the annual rite known as Course Scheduling. We pull them out of class and try to create a slate of courses for next year that will encourage them to dream, embrace their roles in the world, and leave high school in four years with an aptitude and appreciation for what’s next.

Trouble is, it’s too easy for us—and them—to forget that. There are thirty-five students in that classroom, and each one has to have most of a schedule done in the next 45 minutes. In that situation, it’s easy enough to think we don’t have time to inspire, or that they don’t want to be inspired. After all, you’re pulling them out of one required class to schedule them in a bunch of other required classes—where’s the teachable moment?

Right here, right now.

“Hey Jenny, how are you? It just seems like yesterday you came here with your short hair and beautiful bangs (note—you need to flip through old yearbooks before scheduling starts). I liked that look, but you look even nicer with your hair grown out like this

“Can I see the scheduling sheet that was sent home? Great—I see you filled out a few choices. Of course, you’ll take World Literature as a junior, so you’ll read some Charles Dickens. Did you know he ran back into a train car that was teetering on a cliff just to rescue part of his manuscript for A Christmas Carol?

“Your next math is Geometry—how great! You know, Madonna once publicly told her Geometry teacher he was wrong, and that she never used Geometry after high school. But I bet the people who built the platform for the Super Bowl halftime show used geometry when they figured out how to make a portable electronic dance floor that had to be set up and taken down in 30 minutes.”

It’s unlikely any student will respond to these insightful quips by standing up in the middle of class and saying “Wow! Now I see why these classes are required, and they all have new meaning to me! Thank you so much!” Still, a counselor’s task is to plant the seeds that nudge students to see the possible, and the tiller of class scheduling creates a very special, dedicated planting season. Besides, corn doesn’t bloom the day after it’s planted.

And while you’re planting, don’t forget—“Jenny, do you know the reason you take American Government is because our country needs you—“

The Column to Send out Anonymously to All Your Parents

2012-02-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

February 6-10 is National School Counseling Week, and before you go rushing down to the mall to find the perfect card, let me save you the trip. Try as you may, you will find nothing between the Valentine’s Day cards and the Mardi Gras cards (Mardi Gras cards?) that best expresses your feelings for your school counselor on the inside, with a picture of Snoopy, Hoops and Yo-Yo, or even Maxine on the outside—even though many suspect Maxine was a school counselor in a previous life.

This lack of commercial interest in National School Counseling Week is completely understandable, since no one really seems to know what school counselors do. As a result, Congress won’t be adding another national holiday to February any time soon, especially since they already make Abraham Lincoln and George Washington share one day in February for their birthdays.

National School Counseling Week may not have anything on the Super Bowl, but there are still plenty of reasons to thank school counselors for all they are doing, and to thank them this week:

The number of students they work with is far too high. Christopher Tremblay at the University of Michigan-Dearborn estimates there are 459 students for every public school counselor, far above the recommended caseload of 250 students per counselor, and far more than the 225 or so students some high school teachers work with.

They teach more than one subject. Considering teachers help students in only one subject (like English) and counselors help students with academic advising, personal counseling, career counseling, crisis management, college counseling, and getting to class on time, it’s understandable if they don’t have time to tell us what they do—they are too busy trying to do it.

They can’t do a lot of counseling. From scheduling to testing to discipline to being a last-minute sub for a Math class they aren’t certified to teach, counselors’ days are filled with activities that have nothing to do with helping students understand more about themselves or the world around them. Try to cook 3-minute eggs in 30 seconds, and you’ll have some idea about a counselor’s typical day.

They don’t get enough training. Recent studies show counselors themselves admit they were poorly trained for the work they’re supposed to do, especially when it comes to college counseling and career advising. They try and learn these skills on the job, but too often, they just don’t have the time. This is changing, but it has a long way to go.

They don’t get enough thanks. Students applying to college never tell counselors when they get admitted, parents asking for advice never call back to tell them what happened, and students wanting personal advice are too busy looking forward to thank those who kept them from moving backwards. Teachers see student progress in grades, but students don’t get graded in the counseling curriculum, since it’s tough to put a grade on a changed life.

Since a greeting card is out, what’s the best gift to give a caring counselor? U-M’s Christopher Tremblay says if you have a spare 5 billion dollars, you could hire enough counselors to get the country to that dream caseload of 250 to 1—for a year. If not, think about dropping an e-mail or note at the office, thanking the counselors for all they do, and asking what you can do to help. That may not seem like much, but you’d be amazed what a few words of encouragement can do at the right time.

Just ask a school counselor.

College Success Skills They Won’t Know Until You Tell Them

2012-01-25T16:43:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

This is always a hard time for high school counselors. The college application mania that blew through September, October, and November may have been pretty intense, but it also brought a number of really nice students to your office who rarely came in before—and now that they’re in at the colleges of their dreams, there’s a good chance they won’t be by again.

There’s no doubt these students are part of the casualty of high counselor caseloads, where the students who tend to get most of our time are either those needing our help or those who take the initiative to ask for our help. Between these two groups is a mass of wonderful students who do a good enough job of taking care of themselves, but they could probably get a little more out of school and life, if you only had, oh, say, a few hundred fewer students on your caseload.

Since that reduction isn’t likely to occur soon, these students will return to the comfortable middle and be fine—but because counseling is our calling and not just our job, it’s hard to see them go without at least a word or two of advice. To meet that need, here’s a list of quick college tips—all fit in a text, a tweet, a poster, or the morning PA announcements—to try and meet their need to make a smooth college transition, and our need to help them. Start sharing them now—June will be her before you know it.

You didn’t share your locker combination; don’t share your dorm key or combination. Trust me.
You’ll need two hours outside of class to study for every hour in class. Really.
No one visits professors during office hours, other than before a test. Go often, with prepared questions.
Give a professor a rough draft of a paper, and they may read it. Take it to their office, and they will read it—with you there.
Good roommates bring power strips, strong earphones, study at the library, and keep their underwear in a drawer.
You don’t need a charge card, and your debit card should only let you spend what you have. Just say no to overdraft protection.
Buy used books, but don’t believe the highlighting of the previous owner. They may have flunked the class.
College deadlines are like plane departure times. Miss it, and it’s gone.
Your parents will try to hold back and cry on the ride home once they drop you off at college. They might not wait. That’s OK.
Blogs that rate professors are sources of catharsis for contributors, not information for viewers.
Colleges are in towns that need tutors, youth coaches, and soup kitchen workers. Just like here.
Flash drives should be backed up regularly. Don’t find out the hard way.
Internships usually involve the making and delivery of coffee. Don’t focus on what you’re doing; focus on who you’re serving.
College is harder. If it isn’t, you’re doing it the wrong way.
Of course you’re ready. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have sent the transcript.

The Wrong Story on Applying to College

2012-01-19T07:33:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

High school counselors may see an uptick in anxious college students this week. NBC Nightly News recently ran a piece on college essay writing, and since the title was “Cracking the Code”, you can probably sort out it was not intended to be a soothing, reassuring, in-depth discussion on the purpose behind college essays and the quirky questions some colleges ask.

To be sure, there were some helpful bites of advice in this two minute (!) story. One college admission officer talked about the college’s need to see students in a three-dimensional way—and creative questions bring out a side of the student test scores and grades can’t convey. This same officer was later quoted as saying “Relax. Be yourself”, another sage piece of counsel students should cling to.

Instead, most parents and students are focusing on the mayhem portrayed in the two minutes of mashed-up quotes and out-of-context comments that surrounded these two very sane ideas: The college association official who saw the questions as degrading; the stressed-out parent who felt the response length of the question required their child to write a general answer, not a specific one; the well-meaning counselor who said the real purpose of such essays is for colleges to discover the next Bill Gates.

Combine this in a series of four-second quotes, and it would be easy for a viewer to feel like they just got off a roller coaster—a sensation that could be seen as helpful to students, since Emory University’s quirky question asks students to describe their favorite ride at an amusement park.

But to those who are investing more than just two minutes into the college selection process—and that would be us, our students, our families, and our colleagues in college admission offices—the NBC piece was more of a hindrance than a help. Since the deadlines have passed for most colleges requiring these essays, the story is so forty-three seconds ago. Because the tempo of the story created a whirl of impressions rather than a substantive discussion, it’s easy to think the producers of the story wanted to create that effect and affect, since they feel applying to college must certainly make students feel the same way—but how does that help anyone?

It would be easy for students and parents to cave in to the conventional wisdom that college admissions is either a code to be cracked or a recipe to be followed; the only problem with these conclusions is they are wrong. Applying to college is all about what’s next in student’s lives, the building of a plan that will lead them to a larger sense of self, increased opportunities in the world, and more chances to give back to a culture that has given them so much.

Stories like this might lead counselors to want to throw in the towel, but all of those students coming by your office should tell you something else—they want to believe in what you have to say, because deep down, they know you’re right. It’s too bad the media has once again offered the wrong message about college admission, but this creates an opportunity for us to teach and reach out to those who may have doubts—and it may irritate us enough to do this with an even greater sense of purpose. It isn’t the best motivational method, but let’s see where it can take us.

So now, one more time, we say with newfound purpose—“College admission is a match to be made, not a prize to be won.”

And that’s the way it really is.

Counselors Clean Up After the Holidays

2012-01-11T18:21:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

Whether or not your school lets you put up a tree, plug in a fire marshal-approved menorah, or put an inflatable Frosty in the hallway, the last ten days in America’s school counseling offices have been all about cleaning up after the holidays, as only school counselors can.

Tell me you haven’t talked to these students lately:

“My aunt came in from Fresno and said I’d never make anything out of my life if I don’t take Algebra I by eighth grade.”

“My brother came home from college and laughed at me for wearing a varsity jacket. He wore the same thing in high school!”

And my all-time favorite:

“My parents got a little carried away with the whole ‘Peace on Earth’ theme of the season, and decided colleges want me to help the poor. What can I do?”

Welcome to the eighteenth day of Christmas, when students are finally back into their routines long enough to reflect on the holidays and realize that a great deal was done for them—but a lot was done to them as well.

What’s a counselor to do? Get students back to their center, of course.

* Auntie may have meant well when she decided to share the academic advice she heard on talk radio, but this really didn’t help, since students are perpetually worried about who they are and how they compare to others. After empathizing with the student, try asking these two questions:

“So, if you were taking Algebra I now, what grade do you think you’d have?”

Assuming the student answers something like D, F, or Q, respond by saying:

“So your aunt really thinks that would impress a college?”

The point is to assure the student that what matters is if they’re giving their all to their studies. If they are, great; no one, including a college, could ask for more, and no hard-working student needs to wonder about that.

If they aren’t, it’s time to talk about what more could be done with school work, not because Auntie is right, but because that’s what’s best for the student, and the student knows that—that’s why they’re talking to you.

* There’s an excellent chance the one who needs counseling is the big brother who’s back at college, not the little brother who is shivering in your office because he wore no jacket at all to school today. Still, it won’t help to tell your client his brother has issues—chances are he needs to hear something like:

“Wow. That doesn’t look like your brother’s jacket. That’s yours, right? You earned it, right? Then I guess you have the right to wear it with pride, just like many of your teammates do.”

And that will probably be the end of that.

* I’d need a week to articulate my dismay over the parental attitude of “go help the needy—it will help you get into college.” Along with colleges, high schools, city councils, and darn near everybody else like to have community members who make the world a better place and think of someone besides themselves. Community service can help teach that…

…which is exactly why you should prepare a special list of community service options and send it to the parents, along with this note:

“Here’s a list of activities you can do as a family in our community—but you have to do them together. Colleges will tell you-- charity begins at home.”

Keep these ideas in mind, and it may turn out the best gift your students received wasn’t wrapped in paper after all.

The Holiday Gift You Missed—A Chance to do Your Job

2012-01-04T18:03:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

There’s an excellent chance you missed your best holiday present. It wasn’t tossed over your fence or delivered by sleigh, and while it isn’t a coffee shop gift card, it can still provide a kick.

This gift is your job, and a chance to do it with more support, focus, and expertise.

The gift givers are Education Trust, the group designed to close the achievement gap for all students. Their December 12-page report Poised to Lead: How School Counselors Can Drive College and Career Readiness looks at the current use of school counselors in the transition to colleges and careers, the current need for better counseling, and suggests five important ways to close that gap:

Revise the job descriptions for school counselors so they focus on equitable education and on preparing all students for college and career.
Shift university training programs so they center on the school counselor’s role in educational equity and college and career readiness.
Align and tighten state credential requirements so that all school counselors get adequate school-specific training, including college- and career-ready counseling, and practice using data to spur change.
Support working school counselors and principals through strong, embedded professional development to help develop effective college- and career-readiness programs.
Align school counselor evaluations to academic outcomes, including appropriate.

The entire report is worth reading (right after you take it under the mistletoe) and can be found at

http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/publications/files/Poised_To_Lead.pdf ...

…but, like all gifts, it requires a little care and support by the recipient:

Begin by looking at your college- and career-readiness programs. Most schools offer these services, but few write down what they’re doing, even fewer evaluate the success of these efforts, and almost none use data as part of the program or in the evaluation. You need to find out if you are most schools…
…and if you are, it’s time to get some help. Budgets are tight, so start with the questions in the College Board publication College Ed: Creating a College-Going Culture. It’s a free PDF at http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/collegeed/collegeEd-create-college-going-culture.pdf, and while you’ll probably answer “Of Course” to most of the questions, there’s bound to be one or two where your answer will be ‘Wow. Really?” That’s the place to begin.
Contact your state chapter of ASCA, NACAC, College Access Network, and College Advising Corps and see if they’re offering any training in this crucial area. Most of this training is either low-cost or free, and if they aren’t doing any, your call is a wake-up call for them to offer some, and soon—because affordable training counselors don’t offer to each other quickly becomes expensive training offered by experts who haven’t been in a counseling office in years.
Now that you’re improving, it’s time to help others. Ed Trust is calling on counselor training programs to get real about making counselors college and career savvy, a call College Board made a few weeks ago—and one counselors have been making for years. All of these voices can’t be wrong—go back and look at my Call to Action column of November 17^th (http://hscw-counselorscorner.blogspot.com/2011/11/effective-college-counseling-is-just.html) and make the calls and e-mails that can make a difference to our profession. Eight votes decided who won the Iowa Caucus, so don’t think your voice doesn’t count!

Ed Trust has delivered the exercise equipment that will allow us to shed the pounds of improper training and unrelated duties that plague our work and dim students’ dreams. It’s our turn to show we have the resolution to make sure this gift doesn’t end up in the yard sale this spring.

Forward!

One More Essay to Write This Week

2011-12-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

Seniors, I have some news-- college is going to have to wait. You’ve been drafted.

With this economy, Santa and Hanukah Harry have had to consolidate their workshops. Banks aren’t sure the merger will work, so the pre-holiday line of credit they need for inventory is being withheld, and the Federal government has refused to intervene. The globe’s gift-giving leaders are offering community service credit for anyone willing to pitch in and close the gap—and what college in their right mind is going to look past a letter of recommendation from the Big Two?

You’re busy with college applications, but helping out SC and HH won’t take very long—in fact, you don’t even have to leave your keyboard. Put your college essays aside for a second, and start a new document; the gift you need to give is heading to your high school counselor.

OK, now look—language like that is going to move you to the top of the Eternally Naughty list. I know it’s not all that cool to come out and ask for a present, and while this isn’t an easy thing to do, your counselor deserves this. I know some of you think they haven’t been all that much help with your college plans, but if you had 435 kids, I bet you’d have trouble remembering their birthdays, let alone where they’re applying to school...

…and don’t worry if you don’t know what they want—I have that all covered.

Vacation’s coming up, and with buddies home from college and family in from out of town, you may have to make some choices that were clear in Health class, but less so when they’re right in front of you. What your counselor wants this holiday season if for you to stick to your guns; college or no, you’ve got a future that will only be possible if you’re around to live it, and knowing you’re willing to do your part will make your counselor’s holiday.

The gift comes in two parts. First, copy and paste the following few lines, fill in the blanks, and e-mail it to your counselor (their e-mail is on the school Web site, just in case it’s not on your address list):

“Dear Counselor (putting their name in would be a nice touch, but do what you can):

Just so you know, I’ll take care of myself over the holidays. When I hang out with my college and high school buddies, I’ll use my head, and I’ll make sure somebody sober drives me home—same thing with family events. In fact, if Brad and Angelina split, and one of them pulls to the curb in a Porsche and asks me to go clubbing with them, I’m checking their BAC first—while I get a phone photo of me leaning on the Porsche, of course.

I hope this helps you sleep through the night over break. I’ll see you in two weeks.

Sincerely,

(sign here)”

I can see Santa and Harry smiling already—better yet, so is your counselor

Oh, right—the second thing you have to do? Mean it. They may not know your favorite color, but counselors didn’t go into this profession to do paperwork, and some of the work they’ve done to create opportunities for you is work you’ll never know about. Your school counselor may not be up there with Santa and Harry, but they’ve kept an eye out for you in their own way; think of this as their milk and cookies for the holidays, and we’ll all be better off.

Especially you.

All That Work for Nothing? Think Again

2011-12-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

Word is, a student on a TV show got bad news this week from her dream college. She applied early (action?) and she was rejected.

I hear she took it badly, which clearly means her counselor forgot to tell her quite a few things:

* Most early application programs saw an increase in applicants this year.
* These schools may admit more students early, but they won’t be taking everyone…
* …and unlike years past, they won’t be moving all early applicants to the regular applicant pool.

In case you find yourself in the same boat, or perhaps deferred, I have one word of advice. OK, it’s actually a number.

850.

No, this is not the high score on some new version of the SAT. 850 is the number of valedictorians recently rejected from one of America’s most prestigious colleges. True, this was in the regular applicant pool, but still, these students represented the best in their high schools; they did everything they were “supposed” to do—and yet, they didn’t even get to the wait list.

At this point, you’re probably thinking one of two things:

1. “Wow, they put in all of that work for nothing.” (I hear this is how the TV student took the news.)
2. “Geez, if they can’t get in, I don’t stand a chance.”

It had to be hard to be turned down by a school they loved—but did all of that preparation really lead to nothing? Given everything these students had learned, the many ways they had grown, and how they overcame adversity and embraced creativity in making Plans B, C, and Q, did they really get nothing out of it?

If so, they have every right to be unhappy, but not with the college. They should be unhappy for letting the sun rise and set 1307 times from the first day of 9th grade to the day the college said no, never once appreciating all that each of those days had to offer.

They should hang their heads a little to realize, just now, the difference they’ve made to their classmates, their teammates, and the people they served in the soup kitchen.

And if they look back with a little regret on the many times they blew off a compliment from a parent or a teacher because the goal of college wasn’t realized just yet, that’s more than OK. They now know it was at that moment that the goal of fully living each day was conquered with a flourish—and understanding that will make each day all the richer at the wonderful college that had the good sense (and room) to take them.

What about you, and the colleges you’ve applied to? They’re looking for great students who have done wonderful things with their lives. That goes beyond test scores and class rank—it goes to who you are, what you care about, and how you see the world. Problem is, they run out of room before they run out of highly qualified applicants.

The thing to focus on then, is not who told you no, but who tells you yes. If a college wants you but runs out of room, that’s their fault; if they don’t see you for who you really are, well, maybe that’s not the place for you after all. Either way, your contributions will be greatly admired, and badly needed, by the college that has the good sense to tell you yes—which means any no, from any college, simply cannot touch you.

Next time you’re in Hollywood, pass that along to our femme fatale.

College Decisions Come Out Next Week. Are You Ready?

2011-12-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

The first round of early college decisions will be released next week, and things look especially tense for two reasons. A number of bizarre articles cropped up online this fall, telling students the best thing they could do to improve their chances of admission at top notch schools was to apply Early Decision. Based on percentages, the articles said, students stood a much better chance of getting in by applying ED.

That’s all well and good, except the article didn’t say students admitted as ED applicant have to attend that college and agree to withdraw all other college applications immediately.

One online article’s response to these concerns? Hey, it’s October—if they don’t know now, they never will.

Now that’s counseling.

The same increase is happening with Early Action applications, where admitted students have until May 1 to make their choice—the only advantage of Early Action is that students hear early. Because a handful of college increased the number of EA students they admitted last year, the word in the senior hallway was that all colleges “liked” students to apply EA. The result? A record number of EA decisions are also expected, including more early admits—after all, if more students are applying early, it makes sense to take more applicants early.

All of this “get in early” talk is pretty exciting, and it’s great when students are organized and apply with focus and fervor—until next week, when students will realize three things:

More early applicants means more early denials. Colleges may like to take students early, but they aren’t going to take everyone who applies early—and unlike five years ago, more colleges are simply going to say no to those who don’t get in, rather than give them a second look with the regular applicants in January.
Since more colleges are taking early students, those seniors getting a “no” next week are less likely to get admitted to any college that has an early program. More early admits means fewer regular admits, so these students will be competing for fewer spaces at many selective colleges come January.
Some Early Decision applicants who decided to get their college counseling from the Internet will now find themselves required to go to a college they like, but may no longer love, if indeed they ever loved it in the first place. The “one and done” nature of Early Decision sounded great six weeks ago, but students wisely formulated Plan B in case they didn’t get in. Now that they are in, they may need help being psyched with what now seems like the educational equivalent of an arranged marriage.

In sum, the next two weeks are going to be busy ones for counselors, thanks to bad generic advice on the Internet about Early Decision; students applying Early Action based on unsubstantiated rumors, and students being rushed into a college choice they didn’t really have to make.

We’ll need our best skills to support students through the challenges brought by denials, and even acceptances; search for great colleges that aren’t siphoning off huge numbers of admission offers to early applicants; and not look each of these students in the eye and scream “Why didn’t you ask me about applying early, instead of getting your advice on the Internet?”

Of course, it’s easier to avoid this last temptation, given this time of year is all about peace on earth—so go easy on the early applicants of 2012, and be grateful at least they’re coming to you now and asking “What’s next?” instead of waiting until May.

Follow Up—Another article popped up about the lack of counselor training in college advising—be sure to see it athttp://www.takepart.com/article/2011/12/06/when-school-counselors-are-overburdened-and-undertrained-students-pay-price#.Tt_sZmqxul0.facebook , and take action.

Also, congratulations and thanks to Eastern Michigan University, who heard the counselor cry for more training, and created a specialist certificate in postsecondary planning. One down, and about 400 to go.

Helping your Students Make the Most out of the Next Three Weeks

2011-12-01T05:26:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

They call these the lost weeks in high school, the three weeks between Thanksgiving recess and December break where learning is supposed to be going on, where teachers are wondering why Thanksgiving break couldn’t be five weeks long, and students are hoping for the first snow day of the year. Yes, classes are still meeting, and homework is still being done; it’s just a little harder to concentrate right now, while everyone is choosing sides on the musical quality of Justin Bieber’s holiday song.

School counselors know better than to weigh in on the musical tastes of their students, but we need to be alert to make sure our students know how important these next weeks really are. A quick flip of the calendar at a high school on semesters shows students have one or two weeks in January before the semester ends; since most of that time is spent reviewing material, the time to take your grade to the next level is now.

The same is just as true for students on a trimester schedule. Chances are the first trimester just ended around Thanksgiving, so it would be easy to view these three weeks as the “warm up” for the second trimester. But anyone who’s been a student on a trimester schedule will tell you there is no such thing as a warm up period; you turn the academic switch on and keep it wide open for twelve intense weeks. Coming back from December Break ready to learn is great, but students cruising through these first three weeks will come back to find 25% of their grade cast in stone—and nothing in Santa’s bag is going to change that.

Counselors need to make sure students are focusing on the tasks at hand this holiday season, and they can do so in three simple steps:

1. Increase your CBWA time. Counselors may be trained to do private sessions over long periods of time, but this time of year requires us to be in the hallways and in the cafeteria, checking in with students and saying the right word or two that will keep them on track. Counseling By Wandering Around is a great way to get students to remember why they’re in school any time, but especially now.

2. Offer more study skills workshops. Students in semester schools will need some pointers on how to prepare for upcoming finals; students in trimester schools will need a reminder of how to make sense out of the first few weeks of the new term. Either way, counselor-led study skills workshops can help students hear about the importance of studying from a new voice; this is even more powerful if counselors team up with teachers to present them in class, but workshops during and after school can go a long way as well.

3. Touch base with your seniors. Since many colleges have a January 1 application deadline, it’s easy for seniors to get so caught up in writing the perfect essay that they end up with first semester grades that are far from perfect—and they need to remember that grades come first. Seniors may need encouragement to put the essays aside until vacation, and keep up with daily assignments, since homework plays a big part in all class grades. It’s also important to make sure seniors are entering their last high school holidays with a bright attitude; get out there and be seen among your seniors, and offer support where you can.

Effective College Counseling is Just Eight Minutes Away

2011-11-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

School counselors have a new reason to be grateful this Thanksgiving season, thanks to a report released yesterday on the state of school counseling. Sponsored by The Kresge Foundation, the College Board’s Annual Survey of School Counselors measured counselor attitudes on a number of issues.

Two quotes draw important attention to the area of counselor readiness. As the report states,

Although the majority of counselors have a master’s degree (73 percent) and important prior work experience (58 percent were teachers of administrators), only a small minority feel very well trained for their jobs (only 16 percent rate their training as a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale). Nearly three in 10 (28 percent) believe their training did not prepare them well for their job and more than half (56 percent) feel only somewhat well trained.

The report adds counselors have sought out additional training in a number of specialized areas, with college and career counseling the single largest area where counselors sought more training.

This same theme of preparedness is bluntly addressed in the conclusion of the report, with a recommendation to

Align Counselor Education and Training Requirements with the Needs on the Ground. Counselors indicate that their preservice training, while somewhat satisfactory, does not adequately prepare them for the realities they are facing in schools. Course requirements should be updates to reflect this reality, including mandatory work on advising for college readiness, access and affordability.

(The full report can be found at
http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/nosca/11b_4230_NarReport_BOOKLET_WEB_111104.pdf)

The College Board report provides further evidence of the yawning gap between education theory and the reality of working with real students with real needs, a gap unrecognized by most counselor educators and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP). Trained school counselors know the name of the behavior that clings steadfastly to an incorrect view of reality. It’s called denial, and while counselor educators are able to teach graduate students to recognize this trait, they are evidently not able to do so themselves, at least when it comes to their own attitudes about improved training in college counseling.

The College Board report may be the tonic that leads counselor educators to acceptance-- but like all clients going through the five stages of grief, their recovery is best supported with the help of a wise counselor…

…and that’s where you come in. Now that College Board has joined Public Agenda and other studies in calling for counselor training reform, school counselors must show their gratitude for this work by taking action. Five minutes is enough time to e-mail the director of your counselor training program and the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (go to http://www.acesonline.net/contact/) and call on them to put the real needs of students first by adding a required, comprehensive college admission counseling class to their master’s programs.

Another three minutes is all it takes to contact the American School Counselor Association (asca@schoolcounselor.org<mailto:asca@schoolcounselor.org>) and CACREP (go to http://www.cacrep.org/detail/contact.cfm) to ask them to end the circular blame game where counselor educators feel bound by CACREP standards, and CACREP leaves the standards as is because counselor educators aren’t demanding they be changed.

College Board has harvested a bumper crop of counselor opinion, leaving counselors an opportunity to sow seeds of meaningful change in the way future counselors are trained in college admission counseling. As busy as we all are, eight minutes is all the time you need to be a hero and not a turkey; since we all know what students and counselors really need, and what happens to turkeys at this time of year, the choice couldn’t be clearer.

What’s Best, or Whatever?

2011-11-10T06:31:00.000-08:00

By Patrick O'Connor

I was working on some last-minute college applications today, and nothing was going to distract me from them. Students who came by to see me were asked to come back later, and phone calls went straight to voice mail. Nothing was going to keep me from getting these applications out early, but then an ambulance siren blared up to my office window and cut out abruptly, meaning it was in the school parking lot…

…and suddenly, the applications could wait.

Fortunately, everything was fine—but school counselors everywhere are feeling that way about their work this week, as the headlines unravel two human relationship stories that give everyone in our profession pause. A presidential candidate and football coaches are accused of everything from bad judgment to blatant abuse of others, and suddenly the college applications, the report card reviews, and the study skills seminar are on hold—there are other issues to consider.

The headlines are beyond our influence, but they serve as important reminders of the duty we owe our students, our parents, our colleagues, and our community. While requirements vary from state to state, all school personnel are held to high standards when it comes to reporting suspected abuse of any kind—verbal, physical, psychological, and sexual. If you can’t remember the last all-building meeting—not a memo—on the topic of Duty to Report, it’s time to head to the principal’s office and set one up.

There are three important factors to consider. First, this has to do with all school personnel—not just teachers or certified school counselors. Depending on the state, anyone who works in a school—secretaries, janitors, bus drivers, college counselors, lunch workers, and yes, coaches who come to work after school-- are all required to know the law and act on it.

Second, this is about suspecting abuse. If a situation gives you any reason to think abuse could be occurring, you must report that suspicion. You don’t need stone cold proof; you just need that bad feeling that won’t go away; make the call, so the state has the opportunity to protect that child. If you think there’s more to do, that comes next, but this comes first.

Third—and this seems to be the issue that made headline news-- most Duty laws do not allow you to transfer the obligation by reporting to a supervisor. If you suspect a student is being abused, most states don’t let you off the hook by telling your boss—you have to tell your boss and report it to the state yourself. In most cases, this report is anonymous; in each case, it’s an important step in protecting a student and the community.

It’s been too long since the music and film industries surrendered any claim to the title of Builders of Strong Male Minds, and now amateur sports and political leaders are walking away from this same duty. With so many men embracing all varieties of “Whatever” as their life motto, counselors everywhere wonder how today’s boys will become tomorrow’s men if there is no one to point out the path and inspire them to stay on it.

This week’s news gives them two more reasons to give up hope, but one simple trip to the principal’s office can jump start your school to explore meetings, programs, discussions, and behavioral changes that can point out a better way for them, and for all of us.

You’ve got this article, you’ve got a printer, and you’ve got the same choice the headline makers apparently had. Which will it be—what’s best, or whatever?

Your Essay Limit Just Got Lowered. OK.

2011-11-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

College applicants received a cold blast from the East this weekend, and I’m not talking about the snowstorm that created power outages across New England. This cold front was delivered by the New York Times, which had an article in its Sunday edition on the stress college-bound seniors were feeling.

Common Application, the non-profit that allows students to apply to hundreds of colleges with one uniform basic application, had reinstituted a word limit on the essay seniors can write this year. The limit was lifted last year, but colleges complained the essays were too long. Common App obliged them by putting the limit back on, and the Times piece focused on students in angst over having to scale their 800 word essays down to something reasonably close to the stated limit of 500 words.

Before you say “so what’s the big deal”, it’s important to know Common App has said all along that the 500 word essay isn’t being enforced, at least by them. If a student really wants to send an 800 word essay, they can; based on comments from Common App colleges, the Times piece suggested some of them would take notice, and possibly umbrage, with students who went much past 530, but if the student wanted to roll the dice, that was up to them.

OK—now I’ll say it with you. What’s the big deal?

Don’t get me wrong—it’s easy to see why students would be confused and a little adrift with the announcement that Common App’s essay had a limit that wasn’t being enforced by Common App; to a 17 year-old, that’s like a school having a tardy policy, when the teacher takes attendance at the end of class. Mix in the idea that a college may enforce the limit in some unknown way with the general tumult of applying to college, and the potion for problems is ready to serve…

…unless, of course, you just follow the rules.

It’s true each college has their own rules, so keeping track of all of them can be confusing, but there’s a way to do that (did you read College is Yours 2.0?) It’s also true there are some “rules” most colleges will let you bend, like sending one extra letter of recommendation, as long as it really says something different than the others (did you read College is Yours 2.0?)

It’s just as true colleges will be happy to read a 530 word essay that’s great, and they will be less happy to read a 250 word essay that isn’t great. (Well, there is one exception to this rule—but you’ll have to read College is Yours 2.0)

This last rule has been around forever, and the Times is telling you it’s back. So write what you have to say and edit it down to around 500 words. It makes for a better essay (really), it sharpens the editing skills you’ll need in college, and it brings you one step closer to learning which rules are real, and which ones have some flex. If it bothers you to think someone else is sending in a 750 word tome, think about how they’ll feel when the college rep reading it says, in their own way, “hoo boy.”

College is supposed to broaden your view of the world, and if it’s done well, so should applying to college. Plan A is now Plan B, and it’s going to help you get into college, not get in your way— in other words, little darling, I see the ice is slowly melting.

So aim for 500. It’s all right.

Is it Smart to Apply Early? Maybe

2011-10-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

With November 1st coming up, a good number of students may be coming to your door and asking the age-old college question, “Should I apply early?”

As adults, we are wired to respond to this question with an enthusiastic “Yes!”, since the notion of a student doing something ahead of time is pretty exciting, since it’s pretty rare.

Happily, we are trained counselors, so we understand the better thing to do with this question is to ask a clarifying question, like:

“That depends. Where are you applying?”

Since more and more colleges are encouraging student to apply “early”, this specific information is needed so you can give the right advice—which, much to the horror of our adult sensibilities, is sometimes “no.”

If you’re confused, it’s time for a quick review of the “early” terminologies:

Many colleges offer an Early Action option of applying. Also known as EA, students submitting completed applications by this date (test scores, essays, application fee—the whole thing) will get a decision earlier than most other applicants. This can be much earlier; some colleges promise students who apply EA by November 1 an answer before Christmas, while their other students will have to wait until April 1.

Just as important, EA doesn’t commit students to anything; if the college admits the student early, the student still has until May 1 to decide which college to attend. There’s no pressure to pay early or to only go to that college—it’s just a small reward for having things together sooner.

On the other hand, students must be very careful of Early Decision, or ED. With ED, students apply early—BUT if the college admits, the student agrees to withdraw applications to all other colleges, and promises to attend that college next fall, provided that college meets all of their demonstrated financial need. Students can apply to other colleges at the same time, but they can only apply ED to one college at a time, so this is serious business—if you’re in, that’s where you’re going, end of story.

A very few colleges offer Early Action Single Choice. This works like EA, so students aren’t making an early commitment to that college; however, they are agreeing that this is the one and only college they are applying to as an Early school—no EA or ED applications anywhere else. There are many variations to EASC, including some where students can apply to public colleges Early. If a student is applying to an EASC school, read the fine print closely, and twice.

Once you know where the student is applying, the advice about applying early is easier to tailor to their individual needs. As a rule, the only advantage to applying Early Action is that the student hears sooner from the college; since many students are anxious to hear, many apply early, and most colleges don’t take a larger percentage of students from this early program.

The rules change with Early Decision. Since the student is offering an early commitment to the college, some schools take a very large number of students from the ED group—in some cases, as much as 50%. Since fewer students apply to ED programs (many students are turned off by the commitment), a student’s chances of getting admitted could (that’s could) go way up by applying ED—it’s just that the increased chance comes at the price of making a very early decision.

There’s a chance some students will come in with questions about applying early to colleges that don’t offer ED, EA, or EASC. We’ll talk about those next week.

The Debt We Owe Our Children, and The One They Shouldn’t Owe Anyone

2011-10-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

This is one of my father’s favorite jokes.

A man walks into a doctor’s office and says “Doc, it hurts when I do this”, and stretches his right arm way over his head. “What do you think?”

The doctor says “I think you shouldn’t do that anymore.”

I thought of this joke when I read the piece in the Atlantic Wire, indicating Americans now owe over $1 trillion dollars in student loans (you can see it at http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/10/americas-students-now-own-1-trillion-loans/43860/)

The good news is that this is the first time this has happened; the bad news is that it happened a first time; the ugly part is yet to come. Since this debt has doubled in the last five years, student debt is likely to break the $2 trillion mark by 2018 if we keep the same borrowing rate.

What exactly should be done? Some steps are already in place to follow the doctor’s orders:

* For-profit colleges have been closely scrutinized, and students from these colleges have the highest default rates. It may not be cause-effect, but enrollment at many for-profits is down, so it’s likely more students are watching their wallets more closely when they enter the hallowed halls of any college.
* The Net Price Calculator debuts on college Web sites right around Halloween. This Federally-mandated device is designed to give parents and students better information on what they can expect to pay and borrow if they go to that college. Since financial aid packages are a combination of art and science, this tool may not be the debt reduction cure-all of college, but it’s likely to take at least some of the trick out of the treat of postsecondary education.
* Some colleges are simply eliminating loan out of financial aid packages. Not many colleges can afford to do this, but the example set by the few that can is inspiring other less-heeled institutions to find ways to reduce the amount of loan a student has to pay, further proof that necessity is the mother of invention.

This may be a great start, but clearly there is more for us to do:

* School counselors need to take a much more active and early role in the college finance education of their students and parents. There isn’t much to be saved in an economy like this, but putting it in the right place—and in the name of the right person—can make a huge difference over time, and it’s time parents used these important allies in the war on college costs. Elementary school is a great time to begin.
* Counselors need to show parents how to talk with their children about money for college. Too many parents encourage applications to colleges they can’t afford, saying they don’t want to crush their child’s college dreams. Armed with no financial information, students blithely sign off on all kinds of documents, and leave college with four years of great memories and a lifetime of debt. They deserve to know they have a choice; counselors have to help parents know how to explain it.

* Counselors need more financial aid training in graduate school. Effective counseling includes the ability to explain the major forms needed to apply for aid, the major sources to find different kinds of aid, and different college strategies students can pursue while saving money. Professors who run counselor training programs often insist they don’t have time to teach these vital skills, but in light of this finding, it’s way past time for them to understand one simple fact—Docs, it hurts when you don’t do this.

Attention Seniors—Apply to College This Week. All of You.

2011-10-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

By: Patrick O'Connor

If you’re looking for a way to motivate your students to apply to college, North Carolina just may be on to something.

Several years back, the College Foundation of North Carolina started College Application Week. The idea was simple—pick a week to focus all of the energies of a high school on getting all seniors to apply to college that week.

That’s right- all seniors.

If you’re thinking this is a lofty goal, you’re right. Fall is chock full of homecoming and football games and first quarter report cards and a million other things, so it’s easy for students to be distracted and hard to get teachers to lend their support to the effort.

If you’re thinking, this could be a logistical nightmare, you’re also right. To really pull this off, you’d need to prep the seniors ahead of time with all kinds of information; you’d need enough computers up and running with Internet access so they could apply online; you’d need armloads of application fee waivers for students to use; and you’d need to prep parents with financial aid information, so they would have time to explore all college options with their senior before the big week came.

If you’re thinking, this is just too complicated to work, you’re wrong. During the first College Application Week, almost 42,000 college applications were submitted by North Carolina Seniors. The week before, about 4500 were sent; same for the week after. The following year, it was 53,000, *and* the average number of applications for the weeks before College Application Week were way up compared to the previous year.

These numbers don’t represent all seniors, but it’s far more than would ordinarily apply—and the results suggest more students are actual going to college, especially among low-income students, who get so caught in the energy of the week, they decide to take the plunge.

It gets better. This kind of program can only work with many volunteers, and that means volunteers from college admissions offices, all roaming your hallways for a week. Students can’t help but get the college message during the week, because it is literally everywhere in your school. Talk about incentive for your lowerclassmen!

This can also become the break counselors need to actually talk with students about college. If your building is planning a College Application Week, you’ll need at least all of October to talk to seniors, host a financial aid night, prepare transcripts, and train and recruit volunteers. That means there’s no time to sharpen pencils or put test booklets in piles of 25—you’ve got students to see, and for at least this week, everyone respects that.

This idea seems to be taking off—six other states have a program in place, many more are trying one out this year, and it’s likely some kind of program will be in place in at least some high schools in all 50 states in the next few years.

It’s time to get ahead of the curve. Take a look at the resources North Carolina has for their week athttps://www1.cfnc.org/College_Application_Week/CAW_Seniors.aspx and don’t be afraid to set the trend in your state, or to ask North Carolina for help—they’ll be happy to get you going, as long as you don’t call them November 14-18.

They’ll be kinda busy.

Take My Advice—Try to Keep Your Job

2011-10-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

It isn’t unusual during this time of year for school counselors to get a lot of advice on how to do their job—but that advice sometimes comes in the most unusual ways.

“She’s scared of Elmo” can be a mother’s way of asking you to sit next to their child during the all-school puppet show.

“He’s just not into football anymore” could be what a parent says when their seventh grade son is trying to sort out the challenges of middle school.

“What do you mean, you don’t think Princeton will take him?” could mean—well, a million things, actually.

But even in this time of unusual advice giving, the counsel from Mike Boulus stands out and requires our collective attention.

Boulus is Executive Director of the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan. When asked what Michigan could do to address this shortage, especially when dispensing advice on applying to college, Boulus answered “I think if we’re going to really do serious college counseling, we may have to push it into the classroom itself and arm our teachers with the information.”

In other words, one way to address the counselor shortage is to give the counselor’s duties to someone else.

Boulus raises a good point, in that good college advising is a school-wide activity—that’s the basis of the recent efforts to create a college-going culture in all schools K-12.
Still, I don’t think handing the main part of the college counseling process over to teachers is quite what everyone had in mind—including the teachers.

A counselor from Minnesota told me a high school in her region released their counselors and trained all of the teachers to become academic advisers, a role that included working with students in the college selection process. The results included some very unhappy teachers, dazed and confused students, and the rehiring of counselors the following year.

Still, Boulus’ quote, and the rest of the information in the article (at http://bridgemi.com/2011/09/students-left-with-little-guidance-in-high-schools/) provide several important reminders for school counselors:

• Most people don’t understand the depth and breadth of what we do. Most people know counselors help students with personal problems and postsecondary plans—it’s just that they think that’s all we do, or that it’s pretty easy. There’s more to the job than a ten-word description, but getting people to realize that can be a challenge.
• Tough economic times are making counselors pay the price for that lack of awareness. It may not be fair, but when the budget has to be cut, decision-makers will be more willing to let go of programs they either don’t understand or don’t see as effective. Does your boss know what you really do? How about the president of your school board?
• Counselors have to take on the issue of preparedness in college advising. One of the most visible parts of the counseling curriculum in college planning, and because this is an emotional issue for families, the slightest hurdle in getting help can become a mountain of discouragement for the student, and the foundation of a community assault on the integrity of your counseling program. More thorough college training at the MA level, and a proactive approach to college advising can prevent this.

It isn’t easy to take advice on how to do your job, and it’s even harder to find enough time to actually do your job, period. The times we live in demand we not only do these things, but also find a way to build key relationships that will help our community appreciate the value of counselor-centered services.

The Myth of Grit

2011-09-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

“Excuse me, Dr. O’Connor? It’s Meredith’s mother, Mrs. Hart?”

“Of course. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I had just a quick question about our college plans.”

“OK, I can set up a meeting with you and Meredith. How does tomorrow at 1 sound?”

“Actually, I’m hoping I can ask this now. It’s kind of urgent.”

“I see. OK.”

“Well, when we met with you in August, we reviewed our college list, and you mentioned we couldn’t get in to East Coast U.”

“Actually, Mrs. Hart, I believe I said that, given Meredith’s profile of grades, strength of schedule, extra curricular participation, achievements, and test scores, students with similar profiles would have a very modest chance of being admitted—“

“—unless she had some significant additional factor.”

“It seems you remember exactly what I said.”

“Yes I do, and I’m here to tell you she has one.”

“One what?”

“Significant additional factor.”

“I see. Is this something you would mind sharing with me?”

“It’s grit.”

“Grit?”

“Yes. Grit.”

“I didn’t even realize Meredith was taking wood shop.”

“Oh no, it’s not about that. This is a new intellectual trend, so I can understand why you wouldn’t know about it. It was covered in this week’s New York Times. It’s all about how the students who really go on to be happy and successful people are those individuals who learned how to learn from failure, and developed character traits like persistence, curiosity, and self-control. It’s based on the work of.--“

“Angela Duckworth at Penn?”

“Why, yes! I read the article and thought ‘Why, this is my Meredith!’”

“Meredith has grit?”

“Of course she does. And that’s what’s going to get her into East Coast U.”

“It is?”

“Absolutely. You just tell them in your letter about how gritty my Meredith is, and we’ll be in like Flynn.”

“Mrs. Hart, there’s certainly no doubt Meredith has learned a great deal about herself and the world around her in high school, through both her successes and her failures.”

“Oh, I know that, Dr. O’Connor, but her successes aren’t going to be the thing colleges are going to hook onto. It’s going to be her failures, so we have to highlight those instead.”

“You want me to write about—“

“Her failures.”

“To show—“

“Her grittiness. She’ll be one of the first students admitted to college on grit. Daddy will be so pleased!”

“Mrs. Hart, have you looked at the supplemental essays for the application to East Coast U?”

“No, but I hear they haven’t changed in the last five years.”

“That’s true—they haven’t. I have them here on my computer screen—can you read #1?”

“’Describe an experience where you had to overcome adversity. Explain how you handled this situation, and what you learned from it.’ Why, Dr. O’Connor, that question measures—“

“Grit.”

“And it’s been doing that for—“

“Five years.”

“Which means the campus of East Coast U has—“

“Gritlock.”

“But that’s not possible. How could students with grades that high have any grit? They’ve been winners since the day they were born.”

“Maybe some of them. The rest of them have only known persistence since the day they were born, success or no.”

“So you don’t have to be a flop to know about persistence?”

“It’s one way, but not the only way.”

“Well, how else could you learn it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. By leading a humble life, maybe.”

“Hmm. Do you know of any essay coaches that specialize in humility?”

21st Century Skills are so Counselor Centered

2011-09-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

There’s good news and bad news on the education front. For counselors, this creates yet another opportunity to show the importance of our work to teachers, business leaders, and the world as a whole, as long as we act quickly.

First, the bad news. Education leaders have decided America’s students are lacking in key 21st century skills. This recent criticism is yet another effort by elected leaders to try and “reform” education without really knowing what’s wrong in the first place…

…and how do I know that? Take a look at the list of key “21st Century Skills” outlined by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and see if you see anything familiar:

* The three R’s (reading, writing, and ‘arithmetic);
* The four C’s (Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation)

If you’ve been in education for more than 5 years, you’ll recognize these seven items as the key skills for the New Millennium. If you’ve been in the classroom for just a little longer, you’ll remember these were the skills in the report called A Nation at Risk, way back in 1983.

As well meaning as our policy leaders may be, they’re coming a little late (and ill prepared) to the party if they think they’ve discovered some new problem with education that needs to be remedied. These skills have been identified as missing in action for a long time.

Why is this good news for counselors? Because each of the 4 Cs is an essential life skill, or “soft skill”, that can easily be taught by counselors, either in the classroom as part of a team teaching effort, or in counseling seminars before school, after school, or during lunch.

The possibilities here are endless. By teaming with a Language Arts teacher, you could take a problem from a classic book—say, Moby Dick—and brainstorm alternative ways the conflict could be resolved. After teaching some basis problem solving skills, students could use their creativity to solve the problem, and come up with a creative way to communicate the solution. Have the students work together in teams, and you’ve created a lesson plan that touches on all 4 Cs at once, thanks to your counseling insights and your co-teacher’s literary expertise.

The same thing exists with current events, story problems, and more—there is no classroom that couldn’t benefit from your counseling touch in helping students hone their 21st century skills.

What if you can’t find a willing classroom to partner? Go it alone. Even brand new counselors can think of enough real life examples from case studies or past experience to put together a brief workshop that highlights each of the 4 C skills. If you can create a number of these workshops, you can package them as 21st Century Skills workshops that could be modified for adult learners, presented to outside school groups, and shared with the school board—and each of these audiences gives you the potential to demonstrate the value of counseling in your school and in the future of your students.

It seems politicians always want to find a way to try and make education look bad. By responding (not reacting), counselors are not only modeling behavior for students at a time of criticism; we are showing internal and external audiences a new level of important for counseling in the curriculum of the new classroom.

Dialing Up a Lesson on Effective Counseling

2011-09-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

There’s something to be said for a different point of view.

I opened my Facebook account last night (for five minutes only—really, I swear!) and came across a film posted by a high school friend of mine. This vintage 1954 piece, complete with an on-screen Donna Reed look-alike host and background music from a full symphony orchestra, was an educational film teaching America…

…how to use a dial telephone.

“Your service is changing” the narrator announces, adding that the days of picking up the phone and waiting for an operator to place your calls are over. The narration goes on to tell us engineers (pictured in full suits) have designed the change to dial phones with the unique needs of each community in mind.

The narration goes on to show us line workers stringing the cable that will make this conversion possible (full disclosure—I got a little sentimental here, since that was my grandfather’s line of work, and my father’s first job).

The narration goes on to talk about how to use the dial phone—and then it goes on and on, and on, for nearly ten minutes.

We’re talking about how to use a dial telephone.

My high school chum isn’t a school counselor, but her posting was as thoughtful as anything Carl Rogers said:

Her commentary asked if this video (sorry—film) could help adults understand why we are impatient with our children and students when they are impatient with us in understanding the new technology of today. I got antsy after three minutes of this film, so doesn’t it make sense a 13 year-old would their eyes a little when they show us how to send a text message for the third time?

How much internal eye rolling do I do when I’m telling the fifth parent today many colleges would prefer at least three years of a language other than English? Is it really their fault everyone seems to be asking this same question today?

When I put together a lesson, newsletter, or social media post—or when I’m simply talking with a client-- about an important issue, does my message match my audience? Am I designing my communications so the more thorough learners get a couple of chances to soak in the material, while also giving the “one and done” learners a chance to know and go?

What about the look of those newsletters and presentations? Am I taking the time to format newsletters with shaded boxes and graphics that will separate and direct modern readers’ attention to different items? Are my Power Point slides fast becoming the 21^st century version of Aunt Martha’s slideshow of the family reunion (too many, too repetitive, too bland)?

Then again, are my presentations so slick people view them as works of art or a technological light show, rather than a counseling presentation? Am I working so hard at being “all that”, students leave the classroom with visual impressions rather than something new to think about?

There are far too many people telling counselors and teachers how to improve education who simply don’t know what they’re talking about, so it’s especially important to appreciate the times a genuine teachable moment comes our way.

If you want to take a stroll down Memory Lane—or for others, see a documentary on ancient civilization—the 1954 film can be seen below. Since I’ve learned my fill from that ten minutes, I’ll be looking at the other phone company film that’s online—from 1927.

Who knows what I’ll learn from that one?
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Patrick O’Connor will be signing complimentary copies of his new book, College is Yours 2.0, at the NACAC conference next Friday, September 23. For more information, contact Patrick at collegeisyours@comcast.net

School Counseling for September 12th

2011-09-08T06:01:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

The tenth anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 seems to be everywhere. Talk shows are devoting the entire week to interviews and remembrances of those who were lost in the attacks. Teacher Web sites are bursting at the seams with lesson plans for students of all ages. With the day falling on a Sunday, the road side signs of churches promise sermon after sermon devoted to the context of the day from a larger view.

It would be easy enough to assume these activities won’t stir the memories of our students, or impact their daily lives. This year’s high school seniors were seven years old the day the planes landed in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania, and the sixth graders of 2011 were barely walking in 2001. Combined with the excitement of starting the school year, getting used to a new school, and applying for college, it would be an honest mistake to think the students aren’t touched by the events or memories of that day, and won’t pay much attention to the events of this weekend.

But it would still be a mistake.

Students may not have vivid memories of what happened ten years ago, but their parents will—and given the dynamics of that Tuesday morning and all that has happened in between, it’s understandable if parents aren’t able to be as objective as they usually would be when explaining complex issues to their children.

At the same time, some high school students may have very vivid memories of that day. Their memory of the event may not be clear, but it’s likely they will remember some of what happened, and exactly where they were. How many baby boomers will begin their discussion of the day John Kennedy was shot with “I was seven, and it was the end of lunch period at school…?” Why would we expect dimmer memories of 9/11 from their much more tech-savvy children or grandchildren?

Some children may indeed not be impacted at all by the events of this weekend, but as is the case with all good counseling, the best plan is to have a plan. If you haven’t already done so, take a minute to put together some tips for parents on how they should talk with their children about 9/11, and how to be prepared if the guest speaker in the church, synagogue, or mosque surrenders to the emotions of the moment. It’s not too late to send out a last-minute e-mail with this information, and many parents will thank you for it (a Google search of “talking to your children about 9/11” yields some mighty fine resources.)

Remind parents of the importance of monitoring TV and computer time this weekend. It’s always a good idea to keep technology in check, but all of the commemorative events being broadcast can quickly turn an interest in history into an obsession with security.

Give parents the skills and words to use to make sure their children end the weekend with as strong a sense of safety as possible. That is always a nuanced task, but parents will welcome any ideas you can lend, as long as they are presented as options, not recipes or dictums. Support their innate abilities to know how to love their children, and all will go well.

Finally, be prepared for business as un-usual September 12. It’s unlikely any students will walk up to you and say “I’m having some real concerns about 9/11”, but there’s always a chance one or two may have a concern that is being acted out at school instead of being asked in your office. A gentle reminder to your colleagues that you (or someone else) has a fairly open calendar on Monday, combined with a little CWA—Counseling by Wandering Around—can reassure students and faculty alike that a listening ear and helping hand awaits, should the need arise.

This is indeed a busy time, with students starting new years and building bright futures. Those plans need not be dimmed as our nation takes an appropriate pause this weekend to look at what has passed. With the right words and an open office door, we can show our students how to do both with poise, respect, and an egoless sense of self.

As a modest effort to honor those lost in the 9/11 attacks, all proceeds from any copy of College is Yours 2.0 purchased during 9/11 weekend will be donated to the Twin Towers Orphan Fund, devoted to supporting the educational and healthcare needs of the children who lost one or more parents in the 2001 attacks. More information can be found under the Weekly Column at www.collegeisyours.com<http://www.collegeisyours.com/>

The Important College Question That Goes Unanswered

2011-08-31T09:18:00.000-07:00

By: Patrick O'Connor

School has just started, and I’m already disappointed.

It’s not because this is going to be a difficult year for my students applying to college. Admission to well-known colleges will be a challenge, but with a small decline in the size of this year’s senior class, opportunities for admission may just go up a bit.

It has nothing to do with families needing help paying for college. Even with the ups and downs of the stock market, colleges are finding ways to offer more assistance than ever before to families in need.

And it certainly isn’t the quality of the students I’m talking with. They’re more involved, more focused, and as a whole, more calm about college than most students I’ve known in past years.

So what is the cause of my disappointment? I didn’t get an answer to my question.

There I was, in the Detroit studio audience of the MSNBC special “Making the Grade” that was broadcast live to the nation last month. The topic was getting America’s students college-ready, and they asked for questions from the audience. I raised my hand, told the producer my question, and 30 seconds later, I was on national TV.

“We all realize college is important” I said (I was a little nervous, so I think that’s what I said). “Yet out of all the school counselor training programs in America, only one requires counselors to take a course in college advising. What’s it going to take to get everyone else on board?”

To be sure, someone said something after my question—it’s just that what he said didn’t answer my question. He talked about how getting into college wasn’t a problem anymore, thanks to so many colleges offering online classes.

Since you don’t get to rebut anyone on national television, I took my seat, knowing I’ll have to wait a little longer for a real response.

This wasn’t the first time this has happened. For the better part of six years, I have talked to counselors; the counselor educators who run counselor training programs; state legislators, and Congress and asked them the same question. If college is so important, why don’t we train counselors how to help students prepare, apply, and pay for college?

If two-thirds of the young adults in a recent poll said their school counselor was of little or no help choosing a college, why aren’t we helping counselors give better help to our students, the future citizens and workforce of our country?

If 95 percent of the new counselors in a 2007 poll said they thought a college counseling class should be part of counselor training, and over 60 percent said the class should be required of all counselors, why isn’t college counseling taught to every counselor, now?

Like every school counselor, a big part of my job is giving answers to students and families when they don’t know where to turn for college help. If no one shows me where to find those answers, how much of a difference can I make in the life of a young person, no matter how much I care?

Everyone I talk to understands this is a problem, but no one seems to want to do anything about it.

Come next spring, college-bound seniors will have an answer to their biggest college question, “Where will I be going next year?”

By that time, I sure hope I have an answer to mine.________________________________________________

Patrick O’Connor’s new college guide, College is Yours 2.0, offers a better way to apply to college. It’s available now through Amazon.com, and discounts are available for school group purchases.

Coming Back for a Change

2011-08-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

The last week of August finds some school counselors saying goodbye to summer, while others have been hard at work for at least the last two weeks. It’s hard to believe school can be in full swing for so many at such an early date, but that’s part of the change in our world we have to get used to…

…and if any group should be ready to make the most out of change, it’s school counselors. Most of what we do is all about change; we work with students to change their academic behaviors to lead to better grades; we support parents as they look for ways to change the way they help their children; we offer new ideas to students, parents, and teachers as they try as students try to move beyond the past and build more solid futures.

Our training and experience tell us that change is often a challenge. The need to change often comes when we’re dealing with a million other issues, and since change can challenge the way our clients see the world, it can be uncomfortable; this is why so many people decide it’s easier to stick with an imperfect status quo than build a different future. Our clients tell us this in both their words, and especially in their actions; if every client we’d ever met simply did what they said they would do, there’s a good chance our world would be vastly improved, and we may even be out of work.

Knowing the challenge of change, it’s important for us to model the behaviors we like to see in our clients—and there’s no time like the present. Settling back in to school, we often remember a part of the job we’d forgotten about over the summer, a task that may have nothing to do with counseling, and a chore we’d really like to get rid of.

On the other hand, it could be we look at a specific program we’ve developed for our students and think, “This could be better, or different.” It may be the handouts need to be updated, or the entire program put on the school’s counseling web site—then again, it may be that your counseling office needs a web site in the first place!

In the interest of leading by example, now is the time to take five minutes and ask ourselves the questions we often ask our clients:

If there were one thing I would change about my workplace that I can change, what would that be? How would I change it? What would I need to change it? When would I change it? Who could I ask to help me change it? How would I know it’s been changed?

This is a busy time, and resources may seem to be in short supply—but change indeed can be inconvenient in its timing, and the road to being better can bring its twists and turns.

Still, there’s nothing more inspiring to many students than to know they aren’t alone in their quest to finding something better. As the new school year begins, now could be the best time to change the motto of the school counseling office to Lead by Example.

Enjoy the challenge of this great school year.

The Reason you should do What Nobody Else Does

2011-08-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

By Patrick.O'Connor

A high school junior was getting ready to attend a college fair, so she stopped by her school counselor’s office to get some advice on how to prepare. They talked about the colleges she might want to talk to, the questions she should ask, and the importance of writing down the answers each college gave her.

The counselor then suggested the student take a copy of her transcript along to show to the college admission officers. “It will give them a sense of what you’ve done, and they can offer suggestions on what you can take next year.”

“Does anyone else do this?” the girl asked.

“No” the counselor responded, “but you should.”

The week after the college fair, the girl’s mother came by the counseling office. “Thank you so much for talking to my daughter before the college fair. The colleges were impressed by the questions she asked, she felt more confident, and after she showed them her transcript, one college even said they’d most likely offer her a scholarship worth $68,000.”

The key to this student’s success lies in three simple steps:

She planned ahead. By paying attention to school announcement and counselor e-mails, the student had ample time to know the college fair was coming. This gave her plenty of time to prepare for the event.

She asked for help. Part of her preparation was realizing she didn’t know what to do, but because she had plenty of time before the event, she was able to get the assistance she needed—and was able to do so without putting the counselor in a time crunch.

She acted on the advice she was given. It would have been easy enough to thank the counselor, walk out of the office, and forget what his advice was. It also would have been easy enough for her to say “Is he serious? I’m not going to be the only one to take a transcript to the college fair!” But she knew her counselor well enough to trust his advice, and felt confident enough to do what she needed to do to take care of herself—and that confidence made all the difference.

In about a month, many seniors will start to panic, and decide it’s time for desperate measures: mailing homemade chocolate chip cookies to the admissions office; renting billboard space on every freeway that leads to the college, to make sure the rep reading your application knows your name and face; signing up for 9 clubs at the start of senior year.

Instead of panicking in a month, sit down two weeks from now and think about the next steps you need to take on your college path. Once that’s done, seek out the help you need to complete that work, then take action. This may not bring the same adrenaline rush as writing your college essays ten minutes before they’re due, but in the hurricane that college admissions can become, there’s a lot to be said for operating from the center that’s the calm of the storm.

Why College Access is Still Not Diverse

2011-06-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

In their well-researched book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford pay considerable attention to the academic achievement gap between races and social classes. While the authors recognize it will take significant resources and ample time to succeed in closing this gap, an immediate, affordable opportunity exists to improve the quality of academic preparation and postsecondary planning for all students, especially poor students and many students of color.

The need for improved college admission counseling is widely known and well documented. Data to support these concerns was presented in a recent study by Public Agenda, where a majority of young adults felt their school counselor was of little or no help in providing information about good college choices or applying to college.

What is not known is that a vast majority of school counselors, especially public school counselors, do not receive any meaningful training in working with students and families in college admission counseling. The American School Counseling Association identifies 466 college-based programs that offer graduate training in school counseling, but the National Association for College Admission Counseling lists only 42 degree granting programs that offer a course in college admission counseling—and only one of them is known to require the course of all graduates.

The results of this policy decision are clear, and the policy clearly disadvantages large groups of underserved students. Affluent private schools often hire former admissions officers from well-known colleges to serve as their college admission counselors, giving students and families insights into the preparation, process, and strategies needed to make strong college choices based on the student’s needs and interests.

Similarly, public schools in communities where college attendance is an expectation—most often in the suburbs-- devote substantial funds to providing training in college admission counseling for their school counselors. Through professional workshops, conferences and visits to college campuses, these counselors develop an understanding of the need to tailor college choice to student’s interests, abilities and needs, and become familiar with a wide array of colleges—skills all counselors should have learned in graduate school.

At the same time, counselors in urban public schools typically have larger numbers of students to work with and smaller budgets to spend. The same can be said of counselors in rural schools, who have the added limitation of being miles away from most colleges and the location of most conferences. This not only gives these counselors fewer funds to spend on professional development, but it offers them less opportunity, since principals are unwilling to let their lone counselor leave the building.

Combined, these factors raise the likelihood that students in rural and urban areas—the students who play a vital role in making college campuses diverse-- will be less supported in college choice and unsuccessful in college. These factors increase the chances the underserved student will drop out of college, with only lowered self-esteem, insufficient job skills, and untenable student loans as memories of the experience.

The absence of college admissions training and its subsequent consequences have been raised with a number of stakeholders, and all express sympathy for the problem, but none wish to correct it. College professors who run counselor training programs often deride college admission counseling as “not real counseling”, but something akin to academic advising, a simplistic conclusion that is counter to the experiences of the counselors they educate.

The irony is that counselors want this training. A poll of new counselors in Michiganindicated 95 percent of new counselors polled thought a course in college admission counseling should be offered in graduate school, and 61 percent thought it should be mandatory. Since many colleges offering the course are willing to share the course syllabus and other materials at no charge, replacing an elective course in graduate school programs with this needed class could be done swiftly and economically.

All school counselors care deeply about their students, but without proper, in-depth graduate school training in the college admission process for school counselors at all grade levels, well meaning counselors can only do so much—and they are the first to admit more is needed. The long standing paucity of college admission training will continue to contribute to the equally well-established academic achievement gap between rich and poor, and white and black and Hispanic. That one contributes to the other is intuitively and empirically supported; why those who could easily alter this arrangement, but instead choose to prolong it, is a mystery, a disservice, and a shame.

Education Reform Finally Hits Home

2011-06-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Connor

Real change in education may finally be coming to Detroit, a change that should be noted by counselors everywhere.

The woes of the city of Detroit are well known (note: I am a native Detroiter and live in theMetro Detroit area). The former mayor had affairs with at least two staffers, and only left office after he spent millions of city money trying to cover up his indiscretions. The census shows Detroit lost 25% of its population in the last decade, giving it the same population in 2011 as it had in 1911. Recent test scores showed many Detroit elementary schools with 1 in 4 students reading at grade level, leading Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to call Detroit “ground zero” for public education.

Detroit’s need was made clear Tuesday when Secretary Duncan (a Democrat), Republican Governor Rick Snyder, the State Superintendent and at least three extremely well-financed foundations decided enough was enough. Using state laws crafted in the last two years, the governor has created a new, boundary-free school district that will ultimately include every “failing school” in Michigan.

The first schools included will be the failing schools in Detroit. They will receive funding separate from the other Detroit public schools; a local university will offer teacher trainingin these schools; 95 percent of all funding will be directed to classrooms, and principals will have the right to hire and fire staff at will.

All of this makes for great drama, but the real change is in the small print of each newspaper carrying the story; parents sending their children to these schools must agree, in writing, to support their child’s efforts to learn.

And that, my friends, is headline news.

For the last 20 years, and especially for the last 6 months, educators everywhere have borne the brunt of attacks from the right, the left, the rich, the poor, and the unemployed. All of these attacks have three things in common:

i) Some of our kids aren’t learning enough.
ii) All of our kids go to school.
iii) All schools have to change.

But wait. All kids go to school, but only some kids don’t learn—even in the worst Detroit schools 25% of the kids know what they’re doing. Same school, same teachers. What do they have going on that the other kids don’t?

It’s clear none of these critics have ever been teachers, because this is something teachers and counselors have known for years. Who shows up at parent conferences? The parents of the good students. Who calls counselors for help, sometimes to the point of distraction? The parents of the good students. Who volunteers for the PTA, field day, the refreshment table at back-to-school night?

It isn’t a perfect relationship—there is no study that shows kids will go to Harvard if their parents bake cupcakes for school-- and teachers are trained to make a difference in the lives of all students, while parents receive no such training. But it’s still there, and Tuesday’s press conference in Detroit shows that government leaders are starting to admit this.

So what took them so long? Why, instead, have they tried merit pay, eliminating tenure, teaching to the test, degrading teachers as a group, and denying teachers the right to negotiate for a salary commensurate with their education?

Simple. No public funding is tied to parenting, and you can’t legislate a change you can’t control. You can ask parents to change, but that won’t happen unless they want to change. Counselors have known that for years, too.

Maybe education’s leaders need to go back to counseling school.

Planning Ahead is a Piece of Cake!

2011-06-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

By Pat O'Connor

I was heading Baltimore to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob with my fellow counselors. I usually try to sponsor some kind of event while I’m there, and I had the perfect plan--an afternoon tea, featuring a Charm City Cake.
My daughter is insanely devoted to Ace of Cakes, the show that features this bakery, which has created cakes that blow your mind, and blow up--no, literally (look at www.charmcitycakes.com.) Since Charm City is based in Baltimore, I figure I would buy a cake, grab a photo op with Chef Duff, and all would be well-

-and all would have been well, if I had ordered the cake a year ago, and picked up deposit bottles along the highway from Detroit to Baltimore. I went to the Web site to order the cake--a month ahead, just like I would at the local bakery--and found that the next available Charm City Cake date is November 9th. I also discovered that the quality of the cake and the genius behind its design costs you at least $1000

.
Am I miffed? Yeah--at myself. It should have dawned on me I wasn’t the only guy on the planet who watches the show; if I was, there wouldn’t be a show. Duff’s cakes rule so much, people from states that don’t even border Maryland will order ahead and pay to have a cake delivered from several states away.

What might this have to do with college? Watch and learn, rising seniors!

*   Planning ahead rocks. You don’t need to worry about your ACT scores when you’re in eighth grade, but if seniors haven’t taken the ACT or SAT, now is the time to do that in order to get it done by October. That may seem a lifetime away, but twenty thousand of your closest personal friends will be taking the test, and if you wait too long, you may end up taking it at Patterson Park High School. Can you say Good Morning, Baltimore?
*   To find your wallet, follow your heart. I’ve never seen Cake Baker on the list oflucrative careers. That’s because it isn’t--unless you see something in it that no one else does, and you have the strength to give oxygen to that vision. Chef Duff might or might not own a Bentley, but he sure owns the cake baking industry. Don’t believe me? Name ten professional athletes. Now, name 10 professional cake bakers, besides Duff. ‘Nuff said.
*   Quality drives price, not the other way around. The Charm City Web site shows you why the cakes command the price they do; great stuff deserves commensurate pay. Keep this in mind when you college hunt--start with the qualities of the college, and when you find one that blows you away like Chef Duff’s Nightmare Cake (under Gallery), paying for it becomes a goal, not an obstacle--there’s a huge difference.
*   Value your friends. Genius that he is, Duff can’t do it all by himself, so it’s a good thing he’s tight with his friends, who happen to work at the bakery. Moments of Sturm and Drang sometimes seem larger than life--especially during college app season and senior year--but the seas are calmer if you’ve got a crew who knows how a bilge pump works, and you know how to return the favor.
Making it to college, let alone a career, is almost never a cakewalk, but the lessons of Charm City can get you to your college graduation party in style.

Just be sure to order the cake early.

How About a Race To Somewhere?

2011-06-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

By Pat O'Connor PhD

It’s been a year since Vicki Abeles released Race to Nowhere, a documentary that looks at the negative impact our culture of teaching-to-the-test, getting into the “right” college is having on the lives of our students and families. I thought the message was drowning out some of the media-driven college frenzy that has nothing to do with really preparing and applying to college.

Then two quotes came along that hit me harder than a slap in the face with the Fiske Guide.

“My daughter’s in 9th grade and will have all this free time this summer. Can you tell me what community service activities she should get involved in? You know, the ones the colleges like?”

The dad who called wasn’t wrong to ask the question—he loves his daughter, and wants her to have every opportunity to create a bright future. He thinks “right” community service activities will open doors at the “right” colleges that “wrong” community service activities won’t. Since that’s what he ‘knows”, he’s just trying to close the deal…

…and that’s why Vicki Abeles made Race to Nowhere. Like it or not, our No Child Left Behind culture not only tells us there’s just one answer to the capital of Nigeria and 3x+2= 5i; it also suggests all answers can be known without being explored, and the first one to get all the right answers wins. College isn’t like that; college admission isn’t like that; life isn’t like that. Just ask Thomas Edison about finding the right filament for the light bulb. It wasn’t the destination; it was the journey.

Our society certainly took some hits when students graded themselves in college (ask your parents), but we seem to be overcorrecting. If classrooms can’t ask students what water feels like, or how world hunger will end, then knowledge is finite—and if we had admitted that 20 years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this column, because the Internet wouldn’t exist. Meandering has its purpose, too.

On the other hand, we have quote two:

“If Harvard receives 35,000 applications for a mere 1,640 freshman spaces, something is clearly amiss in our value system.”

This is Vicki Abeles herself, in an article where she argues the only two choices in parenting are to “push” children or “encourage” them.

But Vicki Abeles is wrong on both fronts. If bright students have worked hard in school and enjoyed understanding who they are and what the world looks like without feeling the stresses of doing so, why not Harvard? Harvard is a great fit for the free thinkers Race to Nowhere wants to nurture, and it’s free to families who make under $60,000. Given that, it’s a wonder a million kids don’t apply.

As for the argument that parenting is either about pushing or encouraging, whatever happened to it being a little of both? If your child loves music, encouraging them to practice is a snap; if the discipline to practice is part of the recipe of enjoying music, then pushing enters the picture. Just ask Yo Yo Ma, who, to this day, hates to practice.

Schools need to wonder why kids who spend five hours nightly on homework can’t remember what they were tested on last week. At the same time, encouraging students to do their best without learning anything gives us the same result—dysfunctional kids who don’t know where they’re heading, or why they need to get there. The truth is somewhere in the middle; now that the extremes have been established, we need to get there, and in a hurry.

Planning Ahead is a Piece of Cake!

2011-06-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

By Pat O'Connor

I was heading Baltimore to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob with my fellow counselors. I usually try to sponsor some kind of event while I’m there, and I had the perfect plan--an afternoon tea, featuring a Charm City Cake.

My daughter is insanely devoted to Ace of Cakes, the show that features this bakery, which has created cakes that blow your mind, and blow up--no, literally (look at www.charmcitycakes.com). Since Charm City is based in Baltimore, I figure I would buy a cake, grab a photo op with Chef Duff, and all would be well-

-and all would have been well, if I had ordered the cake a year ago, and picked up deposit bottles along the highway from Detroit to Baltimore. I went to the Web site to order the cake--a month ahead, just like I would at the local bakery--and found that the next available Charm City Cake date is November 9th. I also discovered that the quality of the cake and the genius behind its design costs you at least $1000.

Am I miffed? Yeah--at myself. It should have dawned on me I wasn’t the only guy on the planet who watches the show; if I was, there wouldn’t be a show. Duff’s cakes rule so much, people from states that don’t even border Maryland will order ahead and pay to have a cake delivered from several states away.

What might this have to do with college? Watch and learn, rising seniors!

Planning ahead rocks. You don’t need to worry about your ACT scores when you’re in eighth grade, but if seniors haven’t taken the ACT or SAT, now is the time to do that in order to get it done by October. That may seem a lifetime away, but twenty thousand of your closest personal friends will be taking the test, and if you wait too long, you may end up taking it at Patterson Park High School. Can you say Good Morning, Baltimore?
To find your wallet, follow your heart. I’ve never seen Cake Baker on the list of lucrative careers. That’s because it isn’t--unless you see something in it that no one else does, and you have the strength to give oxygen to that vision. Chef Duff might or might not own a Bentley, but he sure owns the cake baking industry. Don’t believe me? Name ten professional athletes. Now, name 10 professional cake bakers, besides Duff. ‘Nuff said.
Quality drives price, not the other way around. The Charm City Web site shows you why the cakes command the price they do; great stuff deserves commensurate pay. Keep this in mind when you college hunt--start with the qualities of the college, and when you find one that blows you away like Chef Duff’s Nightmare Cake (under Gallery), paying for it becomes a goal, not an obstacle--there’s a huge difference.
Value your friends. Genius that he is, Duff can’t do it all by himself, so it’s a good thing he’s tight with his friends, who happen to work at the bakery. Moments of Sturm and Drang sometimes seem larger than life--especially during college app season and senior year--but the seas are calmer if you’ve got a crew who knows how a bilge pump works, and you know how to return the favor.

Making it to college, let alone a career, is almost never a cakewalk, but the lessons of Charm City can get you to your college graduation party in style.

Just be sure to order the cake early.

The Perfect Graduation Gift

2011-06-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Conner, PhD

Seniors, here are some recommendations on how to spend your summertime. College is about trying new things, so give these a spin, and you’ll hit the campus more flexible than Gumby after a yoga class:

Movie You Must See Before You Go To College The Shawshank Redemption was overlooked when it was released the same year as Forrest Gump. Now it’s on TNT every month. A story about second chances , forgiveness and negotiating with the world, this isn’t an easy movie to watch, but it talks about hope, determination, and always knowing what’s right. It will give you the skills to handle Intro to Econ, eccentric roommates, and more.

Movie Clip You Must See Before You Go to College Call it cheesy, but the first scene in The Sound of Music is worth the five minutes and 46 seconds it will occupy in your life. All you see are the mountains of Austria, and all you hear is the remarkable voice of a young Julie Andrews. Success in college demands an ability to stop and appreciate that which is simple and beautiful. Watching this clip will also help you understand why your father’s adolescence was complicated by having an intense crush on a nun.

Song You Must Listen to Before You Go To College The second movement of Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp is the finest piece he ever wrote, and its potential was fully realized by Jean Pierre Rampal. Rampal started as a pre-med major, but his heart had other designs, and he went on to become the premiere flutist of all time. This reminds you that anyone who believes all works of Mozart are the same has no idea what listening is all about—keep that in mind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxgyZYdtAj8&NR=1

Song Clip You Must Watch Before You Go To College It took less than two minutes for Ella Fitzgerald and theManhattan Transfer to find their place in Grammy history in 1983 with this rendition of How High the Moon. Your goal in college is to work this hard to make everything look this easy—and if you leave college without an appreciation for good jazz, your tuition was wasted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBBiH92T-Ws&feature=related

Phrase You Must Add to Your Vocabulary “Ma’am.” Colleges are run by administrative assistants—veteran, organized, secretaries who have a way of doing things that is older than Stonehenge. This method almost always works to your advantage, except at peak times when every student needs help, and their system of order is on the brink of collapse. That’s where you come in.

You: “I need to drop a class.”

Administrative assistant, peering over half glasses: “Have you seen your adviser?”

You: “Yes ma’am.”

You have made her day, and she will never, ever, forget you.

This is good. Trust me. Unless the assistant is male—then, never mind.

Phrase You Must Delete from Your Vocabulary “No problem.” One of these assistants may thank you for doing something. The only way you can get off their good side is to respond with anything but “You’re Welcome.” Practice now.

Book You Must Read Before You Go To College How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. Neither fiction nor a scholarly work, it’s like your Irish neighbor telling you the enriched but true story of the vital role Irish monks held in restoring education to Europe during the time of St. Patrick. You won’t read anything this easy or biased in college, but its story of how modest people can engage in diligent efforts that change history will stay with you forever.

Congratulations.

Patrick

Do Your Get Your College Advice From US News? Think Again

2011-05-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Conner PhD

The long-time feud between high school counselors and US News and World Report took a new turn last week with the release of a survey measuring the value of the annual college rankingsproduced by US News.

Since the early 1980s, US News has produced ranked lists of what it considers the best colleges in the world, the US, and regions with the country. School counselors have questioned the value of these rankings from the beginning, finding fault with just how US News compares colleges, and claiming the rankings confuse students and parents more than help them, since the college needs of each student are different.

Thanks to a new survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), counselors had an opportunity to turn the tables. When asked to rate the rankings on a scale of 1 (low) to 100 (high), school counselors gave the rankings an average score of 29. When asked about the rankings, counselors found fault with everything from the name of the publication (“Americas Best Colleges” suggest one kind of college is best for all students) to the factors used in the rankings.

These factors include the number of applications a college receives (the higher the better), the percentage of students admitted (the lower the better), and the prestige the college is given by other college presidents. Since US News rewards colleges for having more applicants *and* for *rejecting* more applicants, counselors claim some colleges are encouraging more students to apply, even though the college knows the student’s qualifications are unlikely to lead to an offer of admission.

Reporters and other observers feel counselors are envious of the power of the rankings—but the results of the NACAC survey indicate otherwise. Another part of the survey asked admissions officers at colleges to rank the US News Report, and the average score given by college personnel was a 39—better than what the high school counselors gave, but still a failing grade.

The results suggest many college officers understand they have to improve their rank because US News rankings are widely read, yet they feel the rankings don’t have any real value for parents or students in the college selection process.

The survey strikes a final blow to US News by asking college admission personnel if they believe colleges do things to improve their rank that are “counterproductive”. 90 percent responded by saying colleges make changes designed to hold or improve their rankings, but only 46 percent believe these changes occur in the classroom.

This finding suggests colleges are doing things to look better in the rankings that, in the end, don’t improve the quality of education for students. Many of these strategies require the investment of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing programs—money that comes from tuition increases, or money that could have gone to strengthen instruction or improve financial aid offers.

It’s too early to tell just how the results will impact college recruiting efforts, but the survey comes along just in time for high school counselors to tell parents, with authority, that high school *and* college personnel think the US News rankings are of little if any help when it comes to choosing a college.

More than just saving parents the cost of the magazine, this message tells college-bound families to invest their understanding of the college selection process in more reliable, individualized resources, including the advice of a trained high school counselor who knows the student’s needs. That may be the biggest pot of gold at any rainbow in this rain-soaked spring.

The survey is at http://www.nacacnet.org/AboutNACAC/PressRoom/2011/Pages/collegerankings.aspx

Need to Keep Your Seniors Focused on School? Try This

2011-05-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

By Patrick O'Conner

Seniors, I realize you’re engaged in serious academic pursuits, like planning senior skip day and sneaking a Whoopee cushion on the principal’s chair at graduation, so I’ll quickly address two issues I have for you, and you can be on your way.

First, congratulations again on your acceptance into college. A record number of students applied to college this year, so your admission letter really is an affirmation of the hard work you put in, the risks you took in challenging yourself with tough classes, and the many contributions you made outside of the classroom.

I’m repeating this because many students are coming by my office to thank me for “getting them in” to college. I think I know what you mean when you say that, but I’m not sure you do.

As I’ve said before, too many newspaper reporters try and make the college application process more “interesting” by shaping it like a reality TV show ( “Survivor: Showdown on the Quad”). This explains why your parents gave you SAT flash cards for your first communion, or a gold bracelet for your bat mitzvah with the inscription www.commonapp.org. It also explains why your mother’s therapist can send his daughter to Cornell without taking out any loans.

Thanks to the fourth estate, college counselors are viewed as the Dumbledores of College Access, the College Whisperers who bring you into their offices only to get a sense of your aura. Later, at a time when they sense the Force is with them, they call the college of your choice on a special red phone, whisper the Greek equivalent of “Baa Ram Ewe” into the mouthpiece, and voila!—you’re admitted.

Of course, we make you jump through the hoops of earning good grades, getting up on several Saturdays to take tests where the correct answers always form a Scantron silhouette of Snoopy, and writing several drafts of college essays designed to get you to communicate your understanding of yourself and the world around you,--but this is window dressing. The real work happens in our offices, when the moon is but a thin crescent in the southern sky and the wind blows towards Harvard Yard, Touchdown Jesus, orfraternity row at Faber College.

The world would have you believe this, but it isn’t true. Yes, we help you find the right mix of challenge, support and opportunity at your next school. We also help you understand how to give colleges a complete picture of your life through the right mix of letters of recommendation, personal essays, and genuine interviews.

But we are not the ones who “get you in”—you earn the grades, write the essays, and make it happen. That’s as it should be, since it is who you are and what you do that not only gets you into college; it keeps you there as well…

…which leads me to my second point. I’ve just reviewed your course grades since you were admitted to college, and if this keeps up, your decision to turn down the full ride scholarship to Daisy’s Dog Grooming School will prove to have been a poor one.

If you need help remembering what it was you were studying or why finishing high school with strong grades is important, you might want to track down Dumbledore and borrow his Pensieve. But remember, I ain’t Dumbledore—I honestly told the colleges you were a hard worker, and I’ll have to honestly tell them you’ve stopped being so, if that’s the case.

So how about if you forget about the Whoopee cushion, and get back to class?

Supporting Students through World Events

2011-05-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

School counselors are responding to the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden with a wide variety of programs for their students. While the Sunday night event caught many counselors off guard for managing and supporting student response for Monday, many forums and discussion opportunities are planned or underway at this point, all designed to help students make sense of this event and what it may mean to the daily lives of students, both today and in the future.

If you’re in the process of creating a program for your school, consider these key elements that have helped other

counselors meet the needs of their buildings in the past:

Don’t do this alone. School principals are certainly wise to include school counselors in the creation of a building response to unexpected events, but the best constructed plan is one that’s team-based. Not everyone considers this issue to be a crisis, but it’s a good idea to look at your building crisis plan for guidance here—bring your crisis team together, determine who else may have important expertise to add to the team (like Social Studies teachers familiar with the situation), and plan as a group. If you don’t have a building crisis plan, pull your principal, social worker, and two teachers you respect into your office, and start from there—and make sure constructing a crisis plan is on next fall’s “to do” list.

Think back on what’s worked before. A good way to brainstorm possible approaches to working with students through this issue is to consider how the school addressed a previous high profile issue. It’s been almost ten years since 9/11, yet every teacher can remember where they were, what they were doing, and how they helped students through that time of crisis (if in fact they were teachers at that time.) This event has its own dynamics, but approaches that were successful then could be a place to begin here.

Consider your audience. It’s clear that strategies to help elementary school students work through these issues will be different than the approaches used with middle schools or high schools, but it’s important to go deeper than that. Does your community have a number of families with members on active duty? Are there political or religious divisions in your community that need to be considered in developing a response? Are there community resources in mental health facilities or places of worship that should be included in building a plan of support for your community? These issues are important to consider when deciding how—or even if-- a response program is necessary.

How will you spread the word? Once you have a plan, it’s important to make sure everyone knows what it is—students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members at large. It may be that the best plan for your school is to offer an after-school discussion group, or to invite those with questions and concerns to come see you—but they won’t come if the invitation isn’t extended. This is especially true if you’re planning to hold a larger event; if the turnout is small, or if people don’t know why they’re coming, they are less likely to prepare or participate, and the event’s potential goes unrealized. Letting people know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what the event hopes to achieve is key to a successful event.

People turn to the helpers in times of crisis, and this week is no different. Plan your work, work your plan, keep the best interests of

Counseling for the Second First-Choice

2011-04-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

By Patrick J. O'Conner Ph.D.

Is counseling for the unknown an art or a science?

It’s a question that’s plagued our profession for many years, and the dilemma only seems to be getting worse. The recent round of college admissions decisions left thousands of students and parents (and their counselors) speechless, as acceptance rates at many colleges fell below 7%, with one college—the tuition free Curtis Institute of Music—falling to 3.5%. That would be an exceptionally strong batting average for a baseball player, but to high school seniors, these numbers sound like there’s a better chance of getting hit by lightning on a sunny day than getting admitted to college.

The same is true for middle school and elementary counselors. Tryouts for the 8^th grade football team are coming up, and a student is concerned he won’t make the team. After talking with you, he decides to give it a try, and doesn’t make the cut. He goes home devastated, telling his parents you talked him into the tryout.

If his 5^th grade sister comes home with the same scenario about not getting the lead in the spring play the counselor “promised’ her, you’ve got one unhappy family on your hands—especially if the oldest child is a high school senior who applied to Curtis and was rejected. In each case, the question is the same—didn’t the counselor see this coming?

The answer is yes and no. Yes, the counselor knew there were only so many slots for too many students, so some students were going to be disappointed; no, they had no idea which side of the decision your child would be on. Yes, your counselor could see strengths and weaknesses in your child’s abilities and experiences that could affect their chances of success; no, your counselor has no idea what the strengths and weaknesses of all of the other students are. Yes, your counselor has probably advised many students about these activities, so they may have some idea of the standards used by those making the decisions; no, these standards are not always consistent from year to year.

Some real-life examples can give parents something to hold on to as they grasp for grounding. If your son was one of two fast 8^th graders to try out for wide receiver, there’s a good chance they’re in; if they’re one of twenty, the chances go down. If the 5^th grade musical always has lots of roles for sopranos, your high-pitched daughter is in great shape, unless the director decides to change things up this year and feature the altos. If some small college that took everyone last year is the new hot school, there just won’t be room for everyone this year.

The final, essential piece here is developing Plan B before it’s actually needed. Seniors apply to more than one college in case their top choices don’t work out; lanky wide receiver wannabes are encouraged to think about running cross country if there’s gridlock on the gridiron; elementary coloraturas can set their sights on the church pageant or the community playhouse if the spring play doesn’t work out.

The science of counseling involves discussing facts in ways that offer clear pictures to clients; the art involves creating a host of possibilities the client can feel good about without thinking they’ve settled for second best. There will always be first choices, and the pains that come from not achieving them, but the beauty of good counseling is that students and their parents will see the opportunities they do earn as second first choices, eager to make the most of them

On a Scale of 1 to 10, How do You Feel About Evaluating a Counseling Program?

2011-04-14T05:24:00.000-07:00

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

Don’t look now, but the end of the school year is about two months away. For counselors, this means awards assemblies, school picnics, and graduation ceremonies for everyone from kindergarten to high school. But thanks to school improvement programs and state mandates, the long to-do list for May and June may have a new addition—the collection of data to evaluate the effectiveness of your school counseling program.

Hard as it may be, measure we must—data is the lifeblood of most principal’s careers, so it’s time to review some basics for measuring the effectiveness of the department that improves students’ lives:

What do you want to know? This may seem like an obvious question, but that happens a lot in counseling. The key is to answer the question in a way that will show key groups (administrators, parents, your teaching colleagues) everything you do—so once you think you’ve answered this question, you’re going to have to run it past these groups to see if your answers make sense to them.

Suffice it to say, if this is the first time all year you’re thinking about this question, it may be time to do some fact gathering and hold off the evaluation until next year. Bring your stakeholders together, gather some opinions, and begin your plan for 2012; chances are the administration will give you a year to put a quality assessment together, as long as you give them a good reason for the delay—like, you were too busy actually helping students..

How will you measure what you want to know? Everyone may want to know if the college advising program is successful, but if the parents think the way to measure that is in scholarship monies earned, the principal thinks it should be measured by students going to Harvard, and you think it should be measured by how happy the students are about their college choice, you have a lot of talking to do. (By the way, never—never—measure a college counseling program by the number of students who were admitted to a college in a given year. Too many factors are involved that are out of your control; if you don’t believe me, just Google “admissions decisions 2011” and have the smelling salts at hand.) Make sure you reach consensus here, or people may insist you’re trying to hide something.

What will be a satisfactory level of response? I’m not suggesting you do this, but let’s say you want to measure the counseling program’s stress management program by giving random students a stress level test. What kind of outcome will be considered successful—if the average score is below More Tightly Wound Than Big Ben, or if 75% of the students have lower stress scores than their pre-tests last fall. Remember, if you decide to go with a pre-test model of some kind and you didn’t do the pre-test levels, let this go until next year—the data you get with post-test only can only be used in wrong ways.

How, and when will you share the results, and with whom? Once the results are in and analyzed, you can’t keep it secret for long. Decide now how the information will be shared, remembering that results can be shared in different ways with different groups that have different needs—if this sounds like counseling, you’re absolutely right.

The key here is not to rush into this. Look at what other schools are doing, make sure everyone has a common sense of purpose, and your efforts will leave everyone happier than the last day of school.

How to Help Students Deal With College Waitlists

2011-04-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

Photo by Lars Leetaru-WSJ Online

The last big round of college admissions decisions have been released, and counselors are very busy helping students and parents understand what it all means. Adding to the confusion this year was a significant increase in the number of colleges putting students on a waitlist—and with good reason.

It’s hard to be a waitlisted student. On the one hand, you have to plan to attend a college where you’ve been admitted; on the other hand, you have to keep looking at your e-mail to see if another college still wants you. This waiting game can sometimes go on into the summer, and just like the last three months have been hard on all college-bound students, the next two months can be real agony for those students on a wait list.

Counselors can help waitlisted students by asking these simple questions:

If you were called off the waitlist today, would you still want to go to that college? Since the student applied to the college, you’d think this would be an easy question to answer—but it isn’t. If a college says “maybe”, the student may think twice about how good of a fit this college is after all, or the student may simply look at the two or three colleges that have said “yes” and decide that’s good enough. Asking this question can help the student focus on what matters to them now, and that can only help.

What are you willing to do to still show interest in the college? Colleges sometimes tell waitlisted students to send back a postcard or an e-mail to indicate an interest in staying on the mailing list. In most cases, this is an unspoken invitation for the student to make another brief contact expressing their interest in the college (check with the college). A two or three-paragraph update of the student’s achievements and accomplishments since they applied is a great way to show continued enthusiasm, and some students even ask another teacher for an additional letter of recommendation.

These are great communication tools, but they also take time. With AP and IB tests coming up, not to mention prom and other social events, waitlisted students simply may not have the time or interest in putting this update together. If all they want to do is return the postcard, that’s great, but it’s fair for them to know other students may not be going quietly when it comes to the waitlist.

Is financial aid a factor? It’s hard to tell what will happen in this very unusual college admission season, but waitlisted students in past years often found little or no financial aid waiting for them for their first year. It could be that the student’s interest in the college is so strong they would go anyway, and of course the student may get much more aid in their second year, but students and families should know that a waitlist admit can decrease their chances of getting of getting complete aid. If this is an issue for the student, have them call the college and ask.

Do they have a Plan A? This last question is also simple, but important. A student MUST have a college to commit to come May 1st—without one, they may have nowhere to go come fall. Be sure to find out.

Waitlisted students have a lot to think about, but these guiding questions can be a huge help in getting students to focus on what matters most as March Madness threatens to extend into May.

Doing Our Work with a Spring in Our Step

2011-03-31T04:31:00.000-07:00

By : Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

April is indeed the cruelest month for school counselors. While it’s wonderful to hear the birds singing and to see some flowers in bloom, this is the time of year when our workload is at its busiest, no matter what grade level we serve:

* Counselors at all levels are leading their schools through required standardized testing;
* Middle and high school counselors are working with students on schedules for next year;
* Elementary counselors are dealing with students who have simply had it with winter;
* High school counselors are doing some major hand-holding to support seniors disappointed with college decisions

Taken individually, these tasks might be manageable—but add them all together, throw in a request to make a presentation to the school board or chaperone a basketball game, and this is more than enough to put you over the edge.

This kind of frustration is common among teachers, so what is it that seems to make it so acutely felt by counselors?

Because we are the integrity center for our schools.

Think about it. When a student mouths off in class and the teacher asks them to stop, does the counselor see that student if they do as their told? Of course not; we only see the students who talk back to the teachers, so we can help the student sort out their priorities and consider their behavior.

If a senior decides to drop an Advanced Placement class for a gym class, who has to tell them they have to report this class change to the colleges where they’ve been admitted? Right—us.

Who’s called in to mediate a tense principal-parent meeting? Who’s asked to come to the Spanish class and explain the importance of learning a language other than English? Who is supposed to help every student grow every day?

No wonder we’re tired. When it comes to taking a stand on an issue, we spend more time on our principled feet than the Statue of Liberty.

What’s the best way to catch a breather and stay standing tall? Let’s practice what we preach, and remember these three things:

* Keep the big picture in mind. Talking with Joey again about his failing report card may not get him to leave your office as a changed person, but it may give him something to think about tonight, or this weekend when he’s deciding if he should do his homework. We are Johnny Appleseed, planting ideas for growth in life, and they might not be hydroponics; give them the support and time they need to grow.
* Consider the alternative. Leading the charge for right over wrong may seem more like working in the Alamo than a counseling office, but the two can have much in common if we remember the importance of principle and commitment. It’s what we want the students to demonstrate, so these are our behaviors to model.
* Cherish the victories. With the enormous caseloads we carry, there has to be at least a dozen students a day who show some kind of personal growth. Focusing on the 400 who don’t seem to get it yet will keep us depressed, and won’t help anyone grow; be prepared to yell, whistle, and high five every piece of good news that comes your way.

April showers may bring May anxieties about who’s taking who to the big spring dance, but if we follow our own advice and are good to ourselves, the growth of all things dormant since the winter won’t be the only beautiful signs to dot our landscape in the next two months.
Patrick

Helping Kids by Supporting Their Parents

2011-03-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

School counselors everywhere will appreciate the strong, data-driven reminder delivered in a February editorial in The Christian Science Monitor. “Want better students? Teach their parents” is aimed at classroom instructors, reminding them that many parents don’t know how to help their children build good study habits—but they are willing to learn. This article stands apart from others like it because is offers some research suggesting the coaching of parents makes a difference with children, further evidence that much of what goes on in the classroom is impacted by what goes on outside the classroom.

If parent support of classroom teachers is important, imagine how vital it is for the teachers outside the classroom—like school counselors. Our work with students focuses on some of life’s biggest lessons; exploring careers, recovering from loss, preparing for college, and dealing with conflict are only some of the issues in our curriculum, so it’s only logical that parent support of our “teaching” would improve student learning in a number of ways.

There is no single best way to win over parent support—approaches are probably as different as each student and parent we work with. But if you’re looking for somewhere to start, consider these approaches as you review your work with parents:

Communication. The days of relying on parent conferences and a monthly printed newsletter as the only ways to reach parents are long over. A strong counseling Web site that’s frequently updated, a short weekly newsletter delivered weekly by e-mail, flyers posted on the community bulletin board at the coffee shop and places of worship, and even Facebook accounts can spread the word about the quality services and programs counselors offer. No one approach will get to everyone, but every approach will reach someone.
Location. Gone too are the days of sitting in our offices, waiting for parents to drop by to see if you’re busy (and since you’re always busy, aren’t you glad parents don’t do this anyway?) A Johns Hopkins researcher once said many parents don’t come to school because it’s the school where they failed as a student; still other parents are just too busy. It’s time to take your programs and seminars to the coffee shop, the bowling alley, the PTA meeting, the Laundromat—or maybe the school parking lot, where the 5th grade moms meet to gossip. Think about where parents naturally gather—that’s where you want to be.
Collaboration. You might not draw much of a crowd at the roller rink by setting up a table with pamphlets about your services, but if you get the owner of the roller rink to sponsor a family night with reduced rates and giveaways, your chances of success just got bigger. Pass out low-cost ink jet business cards, get the DJ to make some brief announcements of your services, and see what your mingling can bring—especially if you lace up the skates and take a turn on the track.
Abbreviation. There’s a good chance you won’t be able to do much in-depth counseling at the bowling alley, and Pastor Mike probably won’t let you take over his entire sermon to talk about every part of your career counseling program. Make sure your message maintains the right focus and length for the audience and the communication vehicle, and respect, awareness, and involvement in your counseling program will soar.

More good student counseling will occur with good guidance for parents—once they’re on your side, nothing can stop you.
Patrick

A Free Counseling Resource That Beats a Pot of Gold

2011-03-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

One of the biggest tasks faced by school counselors is finding the time to develop their counseling curriculum. Between meeting urgent needs of students and tending to administration-assigned tasks that have little to do with counseling, the idea of “free time” during the day is more ancient than the typewriter, and the follow-up calls and e-mails that keep most counselors in the building long after most teachers have gone home leave little time after school for anything but rest, recovery, and re-energizing for the next day.

It’s understandable why the counseling curriculum can easily take a back seat to more pressing daily needs, but the development, evaluation, and modification of curriculum is an important step in any counseling office. Not only does curriculum development provide a reliable structure of services families and students count on; it also reminds community members—including classroom teachers—that counseling has a specific set of goals, tools, and methods of evaluation, just like any other department in the school.

When it comes to development of college counseling curriculum, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) can help fill the void between the goal of having a curriculum and the reality of having no time to develop one. The Families, Counselors and Communities Together (FCCT) program represents 27 years of research and practice in guiding families through the entire college admission process, from the important first steps of college awareness, through visiting college campuses, completing applications, making a decision on which college to attend, and the ever-important awareness of how to pay for college and make college affordable.

Many are surprised that FCCT also addresses the important issue of college readiness. While this topic may be new to some, NACAC has always realized that it is not enough for a student to be admitted to college; a high school student must develop the study skills, discipline, and goal setting strategies needed to complete the college experience with a certificate, diploma, or degree.

College readiness skills are an integral part of FCCT, making it an ideal curriculum for schools that have a large number of families where the student would be the first in the family to go to college. At the same time, FCCT is presented in a way where families more aware of the college selection process can reaffirm their understanding of the basics of the process and broaden their appreciation for all the college options that exist.

Counselors interested in FCCT will be happy to know NACAC also provides Power Point presentations in English and Spanish that are ready to present to any audience. In addition, NACAC offers a series of workshops called Guiding the Way to Higher Education designed for families with students in grades 7-8, 9-11, and 11-12. The program for middle school students is especially important, since it raises awareness about college in a way that provides information without advocating for a specific college, or putting stress on the student.

If this resource wasn’t enough, budget- conscious counselors (and let’s face it, that’s all of us) will be happy to know that all of these tools are free. FCCT can be printed to your home or office computer and the slide shows can be downloaded to your computer, all without charge. Just visit http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/Marketplace/student/Pages/fcct.aspx; if that doesn’t work, go to www.nacacnet.org<http://www.nacacnet.org/>, and use the search box to find FCCT.

It’s tough finding time and money to develop college counseling curriculum, but NACAC saves the day by providing a time-tested program for grades 7-12, all for free. That’s not just the luck of the Irish—it’s a blessing for all.

The Best Advice When Colleges Say No

2011-03-10T06:21:00.000-08:00

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D

School counselors know the real March Madness begins next week, when some of the nation’s most selective colleges release their admissions decisions. As a pre-game warm-up, let’s stick with the facts we’ll need to comfort the Class of 2011

Most selective colleges are reporting a huge increase in the number of applications.
This increase is due in part to more American students applying to college, and colleges seeking out more students from overseas.
Since this also happened last year, many colleges enrolled too many students last fall. They’ll have to make up for that, so many colleges will be admitting fewer students this year…
…and wait-listing more students. This increase means fewer students will be admitted from the wait list come May—and if they are admitted, financial aid will be scarce.

If none of that does any good, then just say this:

850.

No, this is not the high score on some new version of the SAT, and while it may indeed be the number of times Charlie Sheen appeared on TV last week, that (happily) has nothing to do with college.

850 is the number of valedictorians rejected last year from one of America’s most prestigious colleges. These students represented the best in their high schools; they did everything they were “supposed” to do—and yet, they didn’t even get to the wait list.

Once you share this with your students, ask them how these 850 students felt when they were rejected. Sooner or later, the right answer will come forward—“They probably felt like they put in all of that time and effort for nothing.”

And there is the teachable moment.

It had to be hard to be turned down by a school they loved—but did all of that preparation really lead to nothing? Given everything these students had learned, the many ways they had grown, and how they overcame adversity and embraced creativity in making Plans B, C, and Q, did they really get nothing out of it?

If so, they have every right to be unhappy, but not with the college. They should be unhappy for letting the sun rise and set 1307 times from the first day of 9th grade to the day the college said no, never once appreciating all that each of those days had to offer in and of themselves.

They should hang their heads a little to realize, just now, the difference they’ve made to their classmates, their teammates, and the people they served in the soup kitchen.

And if they look back with a little regret on the many times they blew off a compliment from a parent or a teacher because the goal of college wasn’t realized just yet, that’s more than OK. They now know it was at that moment that the goal of fully living each day was conquered with a flourish—and understanding that will make each day all the richer at the wonderful college that had the good sense (and room) to take them.

It isn’t easy to see watch wonderful students work through the dismay and disappointment college decisions can bring, but if we remember the most important part of our work has nothing to do with who gets in and everything to do with who gets it, the disappointment will fade faster than the memory of the teams we had in last year’s NCAA pool, and students can move forward with a better sense of who they are, and what really matters. Now that’s college counseling.

Early “Admission” Letters Contribute to March Madness

2011-03-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

There’s just about a month to go before many colleges send out their admissions decisions. Ordinarily, this is a time when students focus on their studies, the end of basketball season, or the start of Spring Break.

But this is far from a normal winter—it is a time full of distractions. Students are keeping their eyes to the skies, hoping for one last snow day, teachers are keeping an eye on Wisconsin, and seniors are already watching their mailboxes, since some unexpected college mail is already on its way.

The letters that are coming are called “courtesy letters” or “heads up” letters, and more colleges are sending them than ever before. The heads up letter doesn’t offer admission—let’s be clear about that, since not too much else is clear when it comes to heads up letters. Instead, the letter lets the students know things are looking good, and usually sounds something like this:

“After reviewing your application, we wanted to let you know how happy we are you are considering our college. Since we are sending out offers of admission April 1st, we cannot offer you admission at this time, but we very much look forward to communicating with you at that time, and have every reason to believe you should look forward to us communicating with you as well.”

If this sounds like a curious mix of Lewis Carroll, binary code, and a State of the Union address, then the letter has served its exact purpose. Colleges know that the sooner a student hears good news from them, the greater the chance the student will enroll there. Given the increase in college applications this year, if a college has read an application and really likes what they see, they really, really want the student to be there in the fall—that’s why they send out a heads-up letter.

So why not just tell the student they are admitted? Think about everyone else who applied, students who are highly qualified, but not at the very top of a very qualified group of students. It’s going to take more time to review the rest of a very talented applicant pool, and if a college starts sending out admission letters now, every applicant will be calling the college—or worse yet, asking school counselors to call the college—which will make the application review process even more longer and stressful.

If you think heads-up letters makes the college selection process more messy, you’re right. One of my students came in with one of these letters, and I had no idea what it said. This student made such an impression as a Presidential scholar, they almost offered him the President’s job instead of the President’s congratulations—but for as bright as he was, and for as long as I’ve been a college counselor, neither one of us had any idea what this letter meant, until I called the college.

Now that I made the call, you don’t have to. If one of your students comes in with a heads-up letter, let them know things are looking good but tell them to be careful who they share the news with. Parents can be convinced it means the student is admitted, and other students can be convinced it means they *aren’t* admitted, and the letter doesn’t say either of those things. So be prepared to do some explaining (and to make a lot of copies of this column), and encourage them to be happy keeping the news to themselves, letting it germinate into a fully-bloomed ebullience others can share come springtime.

You Can't Go to College If You Don't Have the Money

2011-02-23T12:41:00.000-08:00

Patrick O’Connor is a past president

of the National Association for College

Admission Counseling and author of t

he book College is Yours in 600

Words or Less

I hope I'm not the only counselor who has problems getting students to apply for scholarships. I know seniors are pretty wiped out at this point, and really don't want to write one more college essay about what they will contribute to campus or how much Animal Farm really meant to them, but it's still my responsibility to get them motivated to write the essays, since the essays can lead to the money they need to actually go to college.

Once I get a grunt of acceptance, the rest is pretty easy. Here's what I tell them:

Unlike looking for a college, this hunt is really pretty easy. First, go to http://www.finaid.org/and look for scholarships that meet your interests, talents, and backgrounds. Your school counselormay have a different site they like more, or a neighbor may have found college cash somewhere else, so ask and look around.

Next, scope out your high school counseling Web site or ask your counselor about the list of local scholarships that are available. This is the most neglected source of scholarship money, because most people think the $200 or $500 scholarships from the local VFW or the Kiwanis club aren’t all that big. Fair enough—but if it takes an hour to write an essay for a $200 scholarship, that means you’re making the same hourly rate as Perry Mason, and you’re way younger.

In addition, remember that local scholarships have a smaller pool of applicants. Anything you find on finaid.org is being seen by tens of thousands of eyes; if you’re in the only high school in town, how many students are really going to apply for the Good Citizen scholarship?

Once you hit these sites, look for scholarships that evolve around the same theme. For example, a number of scholarship center on patriotism. This increases the chances that you can write one well done essay on, say, America’s future, apply most of it to six or seven essays, and be a serious contender for each one. Suppose 3 of those scholarships come your way—you’re now up to $600 an hour.

You’ll also want to ask your counselor if you can fill out one application for all of the local scholarships. Counselors know it’s a pain to complete so many scholarship applications (and the VFW gets discouraged if only 3 kids apply for their scholarship), so they create their own version of the Common App for local scholarships. You fill out one app, make enough copies for each scholarship, write a specific essay for each one, and voila!

The last paying for college thing you’ll want to do (you’ve already complete the FAFSA, right?) is take one more look at your college list. It is wonderful and important to apply to every college you love and dream of, but if they all cost more than the median household income of the US, it may be time to look at more budget-friendly options.

I encourage students to do this in the fall, but if you haven’t done so, now is the time. It’s way too easy to get caught up in admit letters in April that come with financial aid packages where four years of loans will cost more than a Volt—but instead of being shocked, you’ll say “Oh, this is just too wonderful. I’ll find a way to pay for it.”

It’s certainly true that things can work out in amazing ways, but when your college payment options boil down to starting out your work life with a car-payment sized student loan or hitting the Power Ball, filling out one more college app now creates a Door #3 that will seem like a deal come April.

And it probably doesn’t require an essay.

The Counseling Advice Your Teachers Will Love

2011-02-16T17:47:00.000-08:00

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D

Counselors often have to work with students who know they need help but don’t quite come out and say so, and the same thing can happen with adults, including our teaching colleagues…

…like right now, when students are asking for higher grades so it will “look good to colleges.”

I sent this out to my students last week, and copied the teachers in my building. I haven’t heard a peep from my students, but the faculty can’t thank me enough for giving them some support to deal with what seems to be a trickier problem every year, and your faculty is probably feeling the strain. Feel free to pass this along to your students (take out the last paragraph if you’re not on trimesters), and be sure to send it on to your teachers—they’ll thank you for meeting a need they never even mentioned.

Even as we speak, students and parents across America are opening backpacks, tearing off envelope tops, and downloading files to discover that homecoming, the weekend spent at the Harry Potter film festival, and a hint of Thanksgiving senioritis have taken their toll on last semester’s grades:

“A B+ in Physics?”

“A C in Calculus?”

“A WHAT in AP English?”

Welcome to grade groveling season, the time of year when parents across America look at their senior’s laundry and say “What are these stains on the knees of these pants, and how did they get there?” From buttering-up to begging, from outrage to despair, seniors will spend the next couple of weeks planning, scheming, and hoping that they can squeeze just one little grade bump from 3 or 4 teachers, largely because they are certain colleges will take one look at these grades and say “Yeah, well, no.”

I suppose this is where I’m supposed to offer words of solace and encouragement, and outline some approaches towards importunacy that will succeed. OK, here goes:

Good luck with that.

I know you feel badly, much like the point guard who sinks the winning shot after the buzzer sounds, or the junior who finally understands the writing prompt on the ACT on their drive home from the test center. This isn’t easy to live with, and you were so close, but it just didn’t happen.

“But sensei” says you, “college is on the line, and I can fix this, because time hasn’t run out. I’m still in high school, and I still have the same teacher.”

True enough, young grasshopper—but look at the calendar, and see who’s behind. It’s second semester, and that grade was forfirst semester. On the time-space continuum, the jig is up—and if you don’t understand that, maybe you really did deserve that low Physics grade. Just sayin’.

If that’s not enough to get your head out of the rear-view mirror, keep in mind that a small bump in one class grade—say, from a B to a B+—raises your GPA by about .008. Combine that with the advice a college rep gave me—“one grade alone will never sink a student”—and I’d say it’s time to leave your teachers in peace…

…which leads to my last point. Unlike Aunt Midge’s socks, grades aren’t gifts given by someone else—they are earned by you. If you have some reason to believe your grade was calculated incorrectly, find out what the formal process is for a grade appeal at your school, and follow it.

At the same time, I’m guessing this process has nothing to do with baking cookies for your teacher, following them to the parking lot at the end of the day , or having your parents “accidentally” bump into them at the grocery store—and it really doesn’t involve saying “but a grade this low will keep me out of college.”

From what I know, that’s not true, and even if it is, the person who gave you this “gift” of a grade isn’t looking at you from the teacher’s desk 3rd period.

They’re looking at you in the bathroom mirror every morning.

Believe me when I tell you, I’m feelin’ it for ya, but it’s time to pull up those socks Aunt Midge bought you and move on…

…unless your high school is on trimesters, in which case it’s time to check your grades, and look two or three weeks down the road to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

“I Don’t Know What You’re Doing, But Thanks for Doing It”

2011-02-09T12:18:00.000-08:00

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

It just figures that National School Counseling Week starts the day after the Super Bowl. The country gorges on guacamole-covered chicken wings on Sunday, and when America’s most misunderstood group of educators asks for three nacho chips and a high five on Monday, the country is too tired to party.

In some ways, we don’t mind. The last time we made headlines, most people surveyed felt that school counselors were more of a hindrance than a help in applying to college. Before that, we were the punch line of a car ad – “Your guidance counselor drives a minivan”—or we were known as the washed-up teachers who were given offices close to the principal so he could keep an eye on us.

But Jenny doesn’t see us that way.

Jenny was the quiet, slender girl who didn’t cause anyone trouble, except herself. When two or three students saw Jenny needed help, they went straight to the school counselor, who called Jenny into that office close to the principal to talk about it in a safe, confidential place. Jenny got help, and became an even more beautiful person.

Steve doesn’t see us that way either. Three weeks into school, he had his fifth unexcused absence, and was on his way to flunking a required course. He told his school counselor he was working late to support the newborn son no one knew he had. His counselor asked the teacher to give Steve one last break, but never mentioned why. Steve got it, graduated, and got a full-time job that paid enough to take care of his young family.

If you didn’t know that, you’re not supposed to. When someone’s life slips or they don’t know where to turn, school counselors give them the space for grace and dignity to rebuild and strengthen their lives, all without fanfare. Sometimes, if you don’t know we’re doing our job, we’re doing our job pretty well.

Of course, we aren’t perfect. Most of us work with 450 students at once, and some have twice that number. Since many principals think we should change schedules instead of lives, we don’t have as much time to help students as we’d like, and most of us were never—never —trained how to help students apply to college.

I bet you didn’t know that either.

Old habits die hard-- school counselors know that for sure—but if you have a minute this week, stop by and thank your school counselor for everything you don’t know they’re doing, and put in a good word for them with the principal. We might not score winning touchdowns or drive fast cars, but when the goal is to drive 450 students to win their own big game, the minivan really rocks it.

School Counselors and Their Classroom Presents

2011-02-02T17:53:00.000-08:00

By: Patrick O'Connor

Maria was one frustrated educator. She’d been an elementary school teacher for about ten years, but she was still considered the rookie in a building where the teaching staff was seasoned, stoic, and not headed anywhere, either in terms of retirement or new ideas. Every insight Maria gained at a conference or in a journal was met with a patronizing nod when she shared it at staff meeting, and she could feel the life oozing out of her, her classroom, and her teaching.

Unable to communicate with her colleagues, Maria turned to a school counselor, hoping they would listen to her plight. After a brief summation of her years of frustration, Maria turned to the counselor and asked “Is there anything I can do?”

“What would you change in your classroom, if you could?” asked the counselor.

The fire came back in Maria’s eyes. Idea after idea came rolling out of her mouth, with vivid descriptions of what the classroom would look like, how each change would benefit each child, and what a more energized classroom would do for the atmosphere of the school, the students, and their families.

“Wow” said the counselor. “Tell me, just what is it that’s preventing you from making those changes?”

Maria’s stared blankly ahead for a full minute. “Well, I’m tenured, the changes wouldn’t veer from the school curriculum, and they wouldn’t put the children at risk.”

She then picked her head up and looked at the counselor. “Nothing” she said, breaking into a broad smile.

One visit was all it took, and the seeds of change had been planted. About three weeks later, the counselor overheard Maria’s veteran colleagues talking at lunch about the new level of focus and energy Maria’s students seemed to have.

One of those same colleagues walked past the counselor’s office with Maria a week later, with Maria explaining some of the changes she’d made in her classroom. That’s why it came as no surprise when Maria later led a discussion at the staff meeting about the gains in her student’s interest in learning and performance, and how they were achieved.

It’s often said that teaching is one of the loneliest professions in the world, but it’s very easy to think of one even lonelier—school counselor. Surrounded by students and duties from the minute we walk into the building, counselors don’t have much down time, but they have even less time than classroom teachers to take a breath, stop and see the big picture, or consult with a colleague at lunch, since far too often, we have no colleagues in the building who are free when we eat lunch—right around 3:00.

That isolation can easily lead us to believe our work has no value beyond the handful of students we see each day—but then along come the Marias to remind us of the opportunities that exist for counselors to support our colleagues in the classrooms. From study skills to bullying prevention to career exploration to simply being there to listen, counselors offer a wealth of skills, resources and expertise that can help teachers make healthier, more productive classrooms, even if we never set foot in them.

Of course, once classroom teachers know what we have to offer, we’ll be invited to come in more often, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to support better teaching, better learning, and better living, and a host of opportunities await us to bolster those goals, as soon as we stop thinking about what’s holding us back, and start focusing on what we want done.

It works. Just ask Maria.

So—have you cleaned things up on Facebook yet?

2011-01-26T14:20:00.000-08:00

By: Patrick J. O'Connor, Ph.D.

One of the biggest challenges students face is understanding how, when, and where to share personal information with others. This is an ongoing developmental issue, one that became both clearer and more important with the advent of social networks.

Once MySpace and Facebook went viral, students and adults started talking about all kinds of things with all kinds of people—including perfect strangers, potential employers, and college admission offices. The results have sometimes been disastrous: college students who lose internships because of party pictures; athletes who let off steam about their coach on Facebook and lose their scholarship the next day; finalists for jobs who lose out because they showed a little too much of their personal lives for all the world to see.

It’s true employers have more time to Facebook hunt than colleges, but students applying to college—especially the current juniors—need to hear the importance of this message in language they can relate to. To that end, this counselor rap was produced—spread the word, dog!

(Based on a true story that happened somewhere else.)

Joanna thought she was all that
She knew she was a winner;
A 3.9, a 32
The gal was no beginner!
Took 5 APs and tutored too
Her homework was a snap
Spent most nights on the Facebook page
Just dishin’ out some smack
She posted pix of homecoming
Her folks would see as knockouts
But dog, they’d never seen them, since
Her FB page was blocked out

You can’t imagine her surprise
When counselor said “Yo lady,
I got a call from East Coast U
The news will make ya crazy!
The U was ready to admit
When in arrived their intern
‘The buzz is all on FB, man,
These pics will make your hands burn.’
The intern loaded up the page
Of some homecoming hijinx
And in the photo, there was you--
Which made our rep do eye blinks.

“They saw your pictures once or twice
And thought they’d overlook it
But then they read your Facebook smack
And that’s what really cooked it.
Your essays were all erudite
And very nicely tailored
But then they saw the real you
Has language like a sailor.
They read your app and loved you girl,
It’s you they were admittin’,
But now they said they just can’t take
A profane party kitten.”

So dudes and dudettes, hear me out,
Few colleges go lookin’,
But if FB vibes come their way
That just can’t be mistooken
Your full ride dough, your dream admit
Are goin’ down the tank, sir
And all because you tried to be
A bad-selfed Facebook gangsta!