School Counselor Appreciation Week

This week was "National School Counselor Appreciation Week!" What a wonderful week it has been for me and I am overwhelmed with all the love, kindness, and appreciation that was shown to me this week. A school counselor's work can often go unappreciated because a lot of what we do has to remain confidential and behind closed doors. Not everything I do is easily visible to everyone. Sure I am definitely very present throughout the school daily. I go in every classroom to give guidance lessons regularly, I speak at many of our assemblies when I am promoting something my No Place for Hate coalition is working on, and also with being in charge of Student Council, but there is also a lot I do that goes unseen by most parents and staff members. It is also what I consider to be some of the most important and vital work I do and that is my individual and small group counseling.

Each week I work with somewhere around 10 individuals and provide them them with one-on-one counseling. They receive about 30 minutes of counseling each week, so if you do the math, I am spending a large amount of time with this, on top of the guidance lessons, small groups, administrative duties I have that are not related to counseling, and any organizations I run like NPFH and Student Council. There are constantly new kids being referred to me for counseling; just about every week, I get a new referral.

I also have somewhere around 10 small groups, with about 4-5 children in each group and we also meet for 30 minutes a week. Time is spread very thin, but as I said a lot of it is behind closed doors and not visible because of confidentiality. Some of the issues I work with students on in either individual or small group counseling are divorce, social skills, behavior management, loss of a family member or pet, incarcerated parents, abuse, friendship issues, conflict mediation, stress, anxiety, etc. I also spend a large amount of time providing resources to those who are low-income and need help with clothing, food, etc.

Anyway, I am in no way tooting my own horn because we ALL work so hard everyday in the school system, but it was very nice to receive some recognition and appreciation this week! :-) I think everyone can use that from time to time, no matter what profession you are in! This helped serve as a reminder to me to also express my appreciation to others who are in my life, professionally and personally, because it feels nice to receive those reminders sometimes.

Here are some pictures of some of the wonderful, kind treats, gifts, cards, flowers, etc. that I received this week!!

 

I also wrapped up this week with career lessons in PK, kinder, and 1st grade classes. Here are some pictures of what some of our Eagles are interested in doing when they grow up: 

We also had our Student Council meeting today and discussed what we would like to purchase with the money we have raised so far, around $2800.00. We will be purchasing some large drums for the playground along with a lot of other sports equipment we can use at recess. We also discussed our global project we will begin raising funds for in March. Look for information to come home soon on how you can help Student Council raise money to purchase clean water systems for people in Kenya, Africa by making a purchase at Barnes and Noble! 

I will be packing this weekend to head to the TCA School Counselor Conference in Galveston for a few days! I leave Sunday with two fellow counselors from other AISD schools and am glad to be able to bring back new, exciting ideas for working with my students! I will be back just in time for our second annual "Mix-It Up Days" in the cafeteria where students will mix up at lunch to make new friends! More information to come on how that went next week!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! :-)