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.
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