Mental Health Counseling: Time to Assess

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The COVID crisis threw a lot of things into disarray, from families to schools to school counseling curricula. Eighteen months or online school/in-person-no-wait-online school first required counselors to figure out how to put their counseling curriculum online, then sent them scattering when some districts seemed to arbitrarily decide when to put school online, and when to hold it in person. In addition, many counseling offices put together post-COVID mental health programming that was needed to help students remember how to “do” school in person, and how to move past the isolating effects of the pandemic.

It's hard to believe 5 years have passed since then, but time has indeed marched on, and many counseling curricula are looking like the front hall closet after a long winter—full of mismatched boots and unpaired socks that are taking up a lot of space, but not doing an awful lot.

We’re close enough to spring, so let’s do some curriculum cleaning, shall we?

Reinforcing the idea of a school counseling curriculum You certainly know that there is content and skill sets you want all students to have before leaving your school, but this may still be news to classroom teachers, parents, administrators, or even students. If COVID made you take out the messaging that pointed out that counseling has a curriculum, just like math and English, it’s time to get that message back out there.

Considering the key elements of your mental health offerings I once worked in a school that had an incredible number of parents who worked the 2-10:30 shift at the local car assembly plant, leaving lots of students to put themselves to bed while parents worked, and get themselves up while parents slept. Your community may have special needs as well, on top of the usual developmental issues your students face. If you’re not sure, now is the time for a needs assessment to make sure you’re offering the help that will help.

Is there overlap with community mental health services? Local mental health services aren’t as plentiful as they used to be, but some municipalities, states, places of worship, and community organizations are still committed to helping people live mentally health lives. This is as good a time as any to see what services they offer that may overlap with yours—and if they exist, whether you can break free and offer other programming to expand your services, while referring students out to the community programs they might need.

Do you have personnel or professional development needs? As you focus your services on your school’s needs, you may find there is a skill set missing among your mental health personnel. The data from a needs assessment provides ideal evidence for an administrator to give you the training, resources, or extra helper needed to meet a demonstrated need. Now is the time to ask.

Consider how you’re formatting your services Classroom presentations on bullying may have met the need pre-COVID, but your data may suggest there’s a need for a more focused approach with some students. School assemblies, classroom presentations, afterschool groups and more all have something to offer to meet mental health needs. See where the data guides you, and go there.

The big question Throughout this process, keep asking “What will success look like?” No curriculum is worth the trouble if you just keep teaching it without knowing if students are growing. What that looks, or feels, or sounds like is important to consider now—and so is how you’ll be able to measure it.

A Primer on the US Department of Education

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The US Department of Education (known as ED) has been in the media spotlight the last two weeks with an intensity that only compares to the FAFSA foul-ups of last year. Just when it seemed like ED was going back to business as usual, along comes a new president who actually isn’t a new president, and ED is getting more discussion than the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl appearance.

As is always the case with such white-hot social attention, there’s a lot of news out there, a lot of gossip out there, and a lot of hoping out there—hope that ED is on its way out, and hope that ED is going to somehow survive all this. As you make your way through the morning headlines, here are some key ideas to help you sort fact from fiction, and hope from reality.

This Trump administration is different than the last one The 2017 Trump team featured a president who cared Not. One. Whit. about education, with K-12 getting a whopping one sentence in his first State of the Union. Between now and then, someone has convinced the new Grover Cleveland that K-12 is a threat to the American way of life, an example of government overreach, or both. As a result, Team Trump II now wants to clip the department’s wings and influence, any way they can.

Closing ED will be difficult Federal departments are created by Congress, with bills that specify exactly what the new division is supposed to do. That generally means no other part of the federal government can do what Congress wants this part to do. It also means Congress is the only group that can put it out of business.

And yet… Just like a school counseling office, government divisions often end up doing things that aren’t in their job description. ED is no different, offering programming and other services that, it could be argued, are an extension of their mandate, but not an essential element,

That’s where Executive Orders come in. Congress may have created ED, but the president runs it—and the boss can come in at any time and change, add or delete the “other duties as assigned” to ED in any way he’d like. That’s part of what’s going on now, and there is legitimate concern these orders could limit ED’s influence. An Executive Order can also be used to direct Congress to eliminate ED. That may be coming.

Layoffs and Leaves The president can also manage personnel, much like your superintendent does. This can take the form of layoffs, if they feel there isn’t (or won’t be) enough work to do; calls for employees to consider resigning, with the implied promise of layoffs if there aren’t enough resignations; and administrative leaves, an action which takes people out of the office, but not off the payroll. Administrative leaves are the most curious tool in the leadership toolbox, since they don’t affect the budget, but simply keep someone out of the office. It’s generally used to keep dissidents at bay, so they can’t organize any opposition to actions taken by the boss—and those have indeed happened at ED.

DOGE and ED The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made its presence known at ED, and while DOGE can have access to all kinds of databases and personalized information, its role at ED has, so far, been mostly structural—what can they cut, what can they offload to another division. Efforts to access databases at other departments have made the headlines; if this happens at ED, the same is likely to occur.

National School Counseling Week and 3 Questions

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

National School Counseling Week is next week. I keep hoping this is the year when, like Labor Day, counselors don’t have to be the ones to remind the world about this incredible opportunity to thank their hopelessly overworked selves for everything they do, especially the things they do that no one notices they do.

But it doesn’t look like this is that year, so let me instead not only remind you of this opportunity to remind others, but suggest how you celebrate it. Some holidays are basically a barbecue and ice cream, while others bring along opportunities to reflect. My hope is this will be a little of both. After all, who doesn’t mind a little bit of Sweet Baby Ray’s and a good banana split, while also setting aside the insane pace of the life of a school counselor to sit in your work chair, really feel what it feels like to be sitting, and do a little blue-skying?

If you’re looking for help with what you should be reflecting on, try these.

What would I like to be doing in this job I’m not doing? The last time you thought about this question was probably your first counseling job, where a day didn’t go by without you saying “They didn’t teach me how to do this in grad school”, or, “Why am I not doing what they taught me in grad school?” There’s something about the manic pace of the day-to-day work that discourages big picture thinking, often because we think that taking ten minutes to ourselves is ten minutes less we’re with students.

But there is value to ten minutes without students where we still focus on students, and that’s what this question asks you to do. You’ve done this job for a while now, and you know your community—its strengths, its challenges, its resources, what you could do with just a little more time, a little more money, or a little more organization. There is something within you that wants to dream this dream, and NSCW gives you permission to do so.

What would your principal like you to be doing in this job that you aren’t doing? I’ve long had my eye out on principals, and how they support school counselors, and the good ones can do two things at once: hear what you want to do with the job, and know how you’re perceived by the community. Paired together, under the best of circumstances, they use this knowledge to help you build a path forward, to grow your services and grow as a professional, in a way where everyone wins.

So take the time and ask this question. If it turns out all they honestly want is for you to be more available to be a last-minute substitute teacher, skip this. Otherwise, the answer to this question is vital to the next one.

How can you give your principal what they want, so you can get what you want? A counselor really wanted to attend a national college counseling conference annually. She found the nerve to ask the principal, who said “I’ll find the money, but I never want to hear you complain about changing schedules again.” Done.

Such deals may not be the stuff they taught you in grad school, but it’s part of the real world that allows counselors a chance to better serve students and feel a sense of newness about their work. No one ever wants to own a drill; we want a hole in the wall. And yet.

Thank you for all you do.

The Master Schedule and Career/College Curriculum

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

I don’t see why some counselors have been put in charge of building the master schedule. It’s not like we had a course on this in graduate school.

Still, it’s one of those things many of us have to deal with-- so, as we tell our students, it’s time to make lemonade on lemons. Here’s how you can advance your career and college counseling curriculum as you keep your boss happy by doing their job for them:

Design (then require) a career discovery class Old school answers to career exploration—requiring all girls to take Home Ec and all boys to take Shop—scream both sexism and limitation, since both classes only allow exploration of one course. Kids just don’t know what’s out there in the world of work, and even the best interest inventories measure what students like, not what they’re good at—not really the best way to find your way in the world of work.

The answer? A hands-on class where students work with a series of teachers and/or industry experts for a brief period of time (think 1-3 weeks), just long enough to get a sense of what the job entails, pays, offers for advancement, and requires them to learn. Not every career would get represented, but a mix of business, manufacturing, HVAC, social services, health care, applied engineering, and construction would be more than enough to help them make a strong first sorting.

If you were able to build a second version of this class into another grade level (think one in 10th grade and one in 11th), students could walk away with a strong real-life sense of what they could be doing, along with the results of a good aptitude test (is there anything better than ASVAB out there?), a strong resume, and good interview skills. Instructors of the course would have to build strong relationships with members of the local business community, who would serve as mentors and de facto teachers—but chances are there are forward-thinking educators more than ready to take on a new approach to this challenging topic.

Early College/ Dual Enrollment Good career exposure classes strain the logistics of the schedule; good college exposure classes strain the budget, since both options are paid for by the high school and/or the state. This is especially true for early college programs, where students not only take college-level classes as part of high school, but end up with some kind of credential—typically, a certificate or Associate’s degree—within one year of high school graduation. The best Early College programs have some kind of transfer agreement, so students can go on to college and earn a higher credential within 1-2 years of completing the early college program, something that’s easier for them to do, since they now understand what college will expect from them.

Dual enrollment courses offer the same opportunity to show students what a college classroom demands of them, without the promise of a credential at the end. The plus here is that students can choose what subject to study; the downside is the course may not transfer for college credit if they decide to pursue a different field of study.

Building these options into the master schedule may take more than a year’s time, especially if school money is involved in their creation. But research is starting to suggest the best way for students to understand what’s next for them is to try out what’s next (both college and career for all students) in high school—and these are the best options for them to do just that.

Real College Counseling

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

“In your book, you seem to suggest students should think about college as early as eighth grade. Doesn’t that approach just expose them that much sooner to the stress and expectations of a complex process that can take the joy out of learning?”

I could understand why the questioner seemed a little, well, hostile. She had spent a good part of her therapy career working with students and families who had gone about the college search the wrong way, the way the New York Times wants you to believe every student does, and therefore should, go about looking for a college. Apply to the ones that have impossibly low admit rates, requiring you to do all kinds of things to “stand out from the crowd” that you wouldn’t ordinarily do, and have no desire to do—but do those things so you can get into a college everyone (especially the New York Times) oohs and aahs about, not only making you someone the world respects simply because of where you went to college, but likely to make a boat load of money and/or become a Supreme Court justice to boot.

It had been a while since I was asked this question, so I stumbled a little at first, but ultimately righted myself and answered. “The purpose of education, especially high school, if it’s done well, is to come to understand more about yourself, the world around you, and the skill set and insights you need to make sense of the relationship between the two. If you make the most of the learning and living opportunities high school offers, both in and out of the classroom, you’ll get to the second half of junior year and say ‘Here’s where I am, here’s what I’ve learned about myself and life, and here’s where I think things should be headed next’. Do that, and any good college counselor can help you find colleges that will let you pursue your goals with the right mix of opportunity, challenge, and support.”

And that’s it. It isn’t about resume-building, about learning the bagpipes (usually) or spending thousands of dollars on a community service adventure that’s a glorified vacation. It’s about studying the social sciences long enough to see how public policy is born, and how much that intrigues you. It’s about studying chemistry long enough to understand if the fruits of titration lead you to say “OK, so if that’s true, what about…”

It’s about caring enough about what happens to Bayard Sartoris to consider making a living in literature, or if that glitch in your favorite online game is enough to make you learn programming to fix it. It’s about helping a distant relative bring in their corn crop, getting a fourth grader to understand why four times five is twenty, and learning enough about plumbing to decide if you’re going to own a set of wrenches, or pursue a vocation where you can afford someone with their own set of wrenches to do your plumbing for you.

It’s about not only understanding why Ukraine is fighting to remain Ukraine, but is managing to win, and why that matters to all of us. It’s about watching your Nana draw the finest of lines on an egg, and letting her show you how to do it, just as your Ukrainian ancestors have done for generations.

Mainstream media articles suggest you should apply to college to experience life’s futility. If you’ve done high school well, you are applying to college to appreciate life’s opportunities—and the sooner you embrace that outlook and engage in it, the better.

Predictions for 2025

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

It’s always dangerous to put your January 1 ideas down in writing. If I had done so last year, I would have predicted a FAFSA nightmare, an election that would take our breaths away, and a very different landscape for college athletes.

Huh.

Well, since it looks like this water isn’t so shark-infested after all, here’s where I think 2025 is headed in our ever-quirky profession:

FAFSA Relief With so many College Board employees being “borrowed” last summer to fix FAFSA, there were concerns they’d head back to New York with the FAFSA keys in their back pockets, ready to make it a pay-to-play form.

Not so. Early trials suggest we’re in for a much better, maybe normal, year of FAFSA. Now the question is, what will the Department of Education do to win back the thousands (millions?) of students whose college plans were deconstructed because of last year’s debacle. Some kind of publicized outreach would be nice.

The End of ED Despite everyone’s hopes and/or fears, the US Department of Education isn’t going anywhere. The amount of programs for special needs students that would have to find a new home is just too huge to consider. So, while ED has never been the change agent it was intended to be, it won’t be a thing of the past.

What could happen is the weakening of ED by shipping key programs (FAFSA?) to other agencies and departments. This trick was performed by Michigan Republicans with the state department of education in the 1990s, and, respectfully, no one really noticed much of a change in the level of service. Moving programs makes for easier congressional votes (if any) than axing an entire division of government, since they get less press. Keep an eye out.

College Athletics There are two parts of colleges that have way too much adult involvement—college admissions, and college athletics. Drastic changes in pay-to-play have already given more power to grownups who don’t always have the best interest of athletes in mind, and small college athletic programs are likely to start feeling the pain of small wallets this year. This will affect how college counselors advise student athletes in high schools, even though counselors won’t have nearly enough information to read all the tea leaves, leaving the potential for bad choices, wrong choices, and unhappy parents. This could get ugly.

Media and College Access Birth rates, high school graduation rates, and some levels of college enrollment are all down, giving the Wall Street Journal et al a perfect opportunity to recognize that most college-going occurs outside the only 25 colleges they cover. Instead, look for more articles about how much easier it’s going to be to get into Harvard—as in, from an admit rate of 3 percent to, gasp, 7 percent. Because, you know, that suggests there’s a chance.

The best thing national media could do to advance college access is to recognize North Dakota State is a great place to go to school, too. Not this year.

Saluting Jon Boeckenstedt Jon’s work at DePaul and Oregon State changed college admissions for the better, as he used his position, data, and blog to get professionals to think about enrollment and life in ways we hadn’t before. He’s going into consulting this year, and the hope is he’ll continue to steer the ship to innovative waters from his home office. For now, the profession owes a huge debt to a guy who had the brains and heart to find the time to not just ask “What if…”, but to answer his own amazing questions. My friend, we thank you.

An Introduction to Junior Interviews

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

It’s hard to believe counselors will be talking with juniors about college right after we get back from December break. If you’re new to this, here’s a quick tour on making the most out of these 20-minute meetings:

Graduation requirements Greet the student, ask them how the team is doing, then make sure they will have what they need to leave next June. You like them, sure — but they can’t stay.

Class schedule Students need to stay challenged senior year, and colleges care about rigor. Make sure their schedule does both.

Summer plans Students don’t have to go to Harvard’s Summer program, but staying busy and engaged keeps the student sharp, curious, and focused. Students who have to work or help family out will do that a different way — and if they’re looking for something to do, try this list.

Testing SAT and ACT aren’t the must-dos they once were, but they still play a role for many students. Discussing plans for prep, and for taking the test, still matters — and if they plan on applying to a test-required college, taking the class in the summer may be a good idea.

Campus visits If college is in their future, visiting campus, feeling what the place really is about, is vital, and it’s better to do that in the fall. If summer is the only time they can go, that works. Here’s the way to build a great visit.

Why college? Yes, you likely only have 20 minutes, but 2-3 minutes exploring the bigger question of “What’s next?” gives your work more meaning. Sit back, ask the question, and listen.

Building a list Many college-eager students will already have a list in mind, and that’s great. Get the list, and make sure it has 2-3 colleges that are academically likely, 2 that are (relatively speaking) more affordable, and one that’s close to home, just in case. The rest of the list is up to their interests, as long as they know the expensive schools and the popular schools may not become realities. If they’re OK with that, so are you.

Deadlines Many students are applying early action-decision-single-choice, or interested in rolling admission colleges where applying in the fall is a must. If the student doesn’t know about deadlines, urge them to do the homework and build a spreadsheet.

Teacher letters I’m a fan of asking teachers for letters in the spring of junior year, so teachers can write letters over the summer — since they’re busy in the fall, doing, you know, teaching. Two academic teachers from junior year who know the student well does the trick.

Essays You can’t really do justice to essay writing in this meeting, but it’s worth sharing some general ideas. Colleges will ask questions that require specific answers, but many let the student pick. Ask the student “What story would you tell a college that shows them who you are — not tells them, but shows them?” That will get them on the right track.

Paying for college Students aren’t always candid about this, but you have to ask if they’ve had The Conversation with Mom and Dad, if only to remind them this is important. Point out the timeline for FAFSA, and talk about scholarship sites — although I’m not a big fan of them.

What’s going to make a great senior year? Their answer will, hopefully, have nothing to do with college, and more to do with life. That’s good.

What can I do to help you? College is part of life, but they already have a life. Finishing with this question reminds them of that.