Let’s face it — August is not the best time to be a school counselor. New students need help feeling grounded, particularly the ones who feel they don’t need any help feeling grounded. Well-meaning parents new to your school were sure they could just show up the first day of school to register their kids. Middle- and high-school counselors are trying to remember just why schedule changes are their responsibility, and high school counselors are being besieged — before school starts — with parents saying “She applied to college yesterday. Why haven’t you sent their transcript?”
It would be too easy to try and comfort you by saying “This will all be different in three weeks”, but that really doesn’t help, since three weeks is, well, three weeks away. You need some relief now, so here goes:
You’re doing things you weren’t trained to do. There are hundreds of counselor training programs in this country, and not one — Not. One. — shows you how to do schedule changes, or how to register students. There’s a reason for this. This isn’t part of your job.
Remembering this can be oddly healing, since there’s always a sense of satisfaction being right. If you throw it in with lunch duty and bus supervision, you can see these first days’ tasks as a chance to get to know the students and help you build relationships. “Did you go to any concerts this summer?” “I’ve been at work too much — what’s going on with TikTok these days?”, and the usual comments about the teams they’re on can help you (and them) get past the fact that these tasks are mundane, making your time with them much more valuable — especially if you have to say no to the schedule change that would give them lunch with their girlfriend.
You were just on vacation. Summer counseling duties vary greatly, but with some effort, most counselors can remember back to the end of July, when your only concern was moving your backyard hammock around to keep out of the sun. Everyone, from counselors to business folks to artists, have a tough time engaging in reentry to their workspace. Keeping a few photos handy on your phone of vacation, the family reunion, or the perfect peach cobbler you finally conquered gives you the opportunity to peek at them between students to remember your personhood, and that can really help.
Don’t look ahead. Do ahead. It doesn’t really help all that much to say “Once this is over, I can do some real counseling”, since that just makes you more impatient for that day to arrive. Instead, take a few minutes at home to draw up half-a-dozen five-minute activities you can do at the office that you’ll actually use once it’s time for real counseling. Will you be visiting ninth grade classes to introduce yourselves? Take five minutes to review (or prepare) a slide deck you’ll be using. Meeting with seniors to discuss post-high school plans? Review the senior meeting sheet to make sure it’s up to date. Sneaking these activities between August student meetings isn’t planning; it’s doing, and that reminds you why you became a counselor in the first place.
Think Labor Day. The start of your school year isn’t after Labor Day anymore, but you still get three days of summer this weekend. When the next student comes in with the Lame Schedule Change Excuse of the Century, take a mental break to envision the mini-summer that’s coming up. See yourself sleeping in, poolside, or next to a plate full of grilled brats and grandma’s deviled eggs. It works.
