Ready, Set, Counsel: A Practical Guide to Being a School Counselor in the Real World

To school counselors everywhere; past present and future

What Others are Saying about Ready, Set, Counsel: A Practical Guide to Being a School Counselor in the Real World

"I have found that what makes a good counselor is the ability to deal with the everyday challenges in a practical way, and this is exactly what Ready, Set, Counsel is all about."

--- Jamie McHale

Elementary School Counselor

Dr. Hoffmann was an amazing mentor for my first high school counseling job. In this book, she has compiled practical, creative ideas and recommendations that make the challenging job of a high school counselor easier to manage.

--- Paul Milonas

High School Counseling Co-Chair

Ready, Set, Counsel

A Practical Guide to Being a School Counselor in the Real World

By Joan Hoffmann, EdD

Copyright 2013 Joan Hoffmann

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

I owe a debt of gratitude first to the many fellow counselors with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working throughout my career, but especially at my first assignment Parkway Central High School in Chesterfield, Missouri. It was from all of them I learned the limits of the text book and the wide variety of skills that a counselor needs.

It is said, the student becomes the teacher. That has been true in my experience as well. Students taught me they don’t necessarily fit any text book model, but rather each one is a special case. They have different ideas, baggage and ways of processing that may not fit any particular model. Students helped me grow by showing me that I would have to adapt many of the principles I was taught to apply to their unique situations.

Teachers and other coworkers showed me the value of team work. A counselor can’t stay closed in their office. The relationships that are formed with the rest of the school staff provide greater insights, not only into the issues and problems of students, but also into the staff interactions with the students and each other.

Parents love their children. There is no one more important than their child. They taught me to always keep this fact in mind, even when the parent was being demanding. My interactions with parents underscored their critical importance in being part of the team that educates their child. When home and school work together, the child is most likely to succeed.

I have to thank my students at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. It was through their eyes that I saw the need for this book and it was their eagerness to learn that gave me the enthusiasm to write it.

Special thanks to Bobbi Linkemer who showed me the process to move from concept to completion. Without her mentoring, this book may never have come to fruition.

My gratitude to Brian Hutchison, PhD, NCC, Coordinator, School Counseling Program, University of Missouri – St. Louis. By encouraging me to publish Ready, Set, Counsel as an ebook, he enabled me to make this book accessible to future counselors.

Finally, thanks to my family for their encouragement and support.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Preface

Chapter 1: Your office

Physical layout

Lighting and amenities

Chapter 2: Your desk

Organization

How to set up your fingertip filing system

Cheat sheets

Confidential files

Chapter 3: Keeping track

Keeping track of students

Keeping track of feelings

Keeping track of achievement

Keeping track of schedules

Keeping track of privacy

Chapter 4: Procedures

Maintaining confidentiality

Talking with students

Talking with others

Getting and giving information

Sharing information with divorced or unmarried parents

Looking at files

Releasing students

Handling homeless students

Managing suicide threats

Using the hot line

Chapter 5: Recommendations

Documentation

Value of keeping copies

Chain of command

Outside speakers

New students

Client triage

Mediation

Death

Location, location, location

Your safety

Smiles

Chapter 6: Communication

Presenting yourself

Avoiding How does it feel?

Facilitating

You can only control yourself

Letting the client decide

Providing choices

Is it really ok?

Chapter 7: Behaviors

Sharing

Owning the solution

Giving advice

Making promises

Qualifying

Reflective listening

Mixed messages

Interrupting

Being a support

Being defensive

Being human

Staying calm on the outside

Maintaining the counselor face

Chapter 8: Student Contacts

Counseling all students

Believing in your students

Finding privacy anywhere

Oopsing into students

Working outside your office

Advocating for your students

Helping students reenter

Providing positive strokes

Knowing before you ask

Touching

Passing notes

Giving special attention

Chapter 9: Skills

Establishing a comfort level

Keeping busy

Clarifying

Using a sense of humor

Buying time

Using silence

Challenging and confronting

Breathing deeply

Handling tears

Looping

Whispering

Applying worst-case scenario

Asking questions, but not too many

Looking for an opening

Avoiding I don’t know

Losing the student

Setting goals

Ending an idea or session

Chapter 10: Becoming an effective counselor

Contacts

I want to give you time, but…

Flexibility

Follow through

Availability

Personal notes are important

Set your limits

Time for yourself

Monitor yourself

Students’ files and tests

Gossip

Onion sandwich

Brad’s story

Observations

Discipline

Memory aids

Extra hours

Small gestures

The person in your office is your priority

Trust

Evaluation

Chapter 11: Who else will you see?

Staff

Teachers are vital

Special education

Be a team player

Respect teachers’ time

Group time

Need to know

Know what I heard?

Principal relationship

Your peers

Support staff

Respecting the counselor

Your ally, the nurse

Parents

Complaining

Helping parents

Fielding special requests

Handling professional referrals

Chapter 12: Final thoughts

Appendix

Foreword

As school counselors, our jobs are constantly evolving to add new responsibilities and expectations, but we all start in the same place- sitting in our new office praying we can meet the needs of all stakeholders while maintaining our sanity. We are green to say the least, and the crash course in what it truly means to be a school counselor is about to start. Often times we might find ourselves reflecting back upon a particularly uncomfortable event and thinking, I don’t remember learning how to deal with that in school!

I was lucky my first year as a counselor. I had just finished Dr. Hoffmann’s internship class when I found out I had landed my first school counseling position at an elementary school. While I was terrified to be the only full time counselor in the building, I had learned so much during my internship classes. It was the one class during graduate school that I looked forward to every week, and it was all due to the tips that Dr. Hoffmann would share with us. While listening to discussions in class, Dr. Hoffmann would often say, Here’s a tip. Write this down, or Here’s what they don’t tell you, and the pens of twenty-something eager graduate students would hit the paper. It might be something about note-taking, writing thank-you notes, or how you can hang up on a person who is yelling at you (but of course you tell them, I’m hanging up now!). These are the things I have found most valuable since becoming a school counselor, because they were the things future school counselors weren’t being told yet had to deal with regularly. I told Dr. Hoffmann in my last paper that I would use her tips as a bible to school counseling, and I have met many successes as a result. I had the upper hand and was prepared in ways my counterparts were not.

Before I was a school counselor, I was a middle school teacher, and Dr. Hoffmann was a counselor at my school. Although I never got to work with her before she retired, the man I would eventually marry had worked with her every year she was at that school. When talking about the impact of school counselors on his job for the last nearly twenty years, Dr. Hoffmann rates as the best in his book. Her everyday practices as a counselor and consideration for all stakeholders, teachers included, resonated with him. She was always organized, understood the teachers’ points of view, and looked at the big picture before making a final decision. These are the things that made Dr. Hoffmann an amazing school counselor, and that’s what you can find in this book.

When I started reading through this book, I found myself going back to my notes from the internship class and saying, Oh, yeah! quite a lot. I can still hear Dr. Hoffmann talking about these things as if she were right here with me. Even today, this information continues to help me gain insight on new situations and provides reminders of how I could have better dealt with older situations. I have found that what makes a good counselor is the ability to deal with the everyday challenges in a practical way, and this is exactly what Ready, Set, Counsel is all about.

Jamie McHale

School Counselor

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Introduction

People become counselors for a variety of reasons. It might be because their friends or family told them that they were so easy to talk to or that they would make a good counselor. They may be driven by a desire to change the world or they may simply be the type of people who want to take care of others. Possibly they were in counseling themselves, and moved by the value of counseling and the difference it made to them, they decided to make counseling their life’s work.

Those who are motivated to pursue a career in school counseling typically first complete a master’s program in counseling. The program covers a range of topics, most of which deal with the theories that underpin the practice of counseling. At the end of the program, candidates complete an internship supervised by a faculty member of the university, which is designed to provide them with real-world experience before they enter the field as professionals. Ideally, this experience exposes the candidate to two counseling realities; first, clients aren’t nearly as cooperative in the flesh as they are in the texts, and second, the counseling job includes a great deal more than just counseling students. For a variety of reasons, the internship may neither fully represent both of these realities nor offer adequate solutions if it does.

This book was written to fill these two gaps. I intend it to act as both a coach in further developing your counseling skills and as a mentor to help you deal with those demands within the school counselor’s ever-expanding role that go beyond the counseling of students. Unlike most of the books available on the subject of school counseling, Ready, Set, Counsel: A Practical Guide to Being a School Counselor in the Real World does not address itself to theory, curricula or programs, nor is it limited to any grade level or subgroup of the student population. Rather, it is designed to help both new and even more experienced counselors become more effective by applying the book’s practical ideas to virtually every aspect of school counseling.

Ready, Set, Counsel begins with the basics of organization. Chapter 1 will help you set up your physical environment in the way that is most conducive to your comfort and that of your clients. Chapter 2 helps you get your office organized with tips that will improve your efficiency and help protect confidential information. Chapter 3 will assist you in dealing with one of a counselor’s key concerns: keeping track of virtually everything.

In Chapters 4 and 5 you will find guidance for dealing with a variety of typical issues that you will confront. The issues include those that are impacted by law and the policies and procedures of your district and school, as well as those for which you must rely on your own judgment.

Chapters 6 through 9 provide coaching on counseling skills. This section of the book covers the topics of communication, your behaviors, relationships with students, and techniques that you can use to improve counseling sessions and promote a therapeutic relationship with your clients.

Chapter 10 will help you take the next step to becoming a truly effective counselor. It covers the behaviors, practices and attributes that separate the outstanding counselor from the good counselor.

Chapter 11 discusses the counselor’s other stakeholders: school staff and parents. While the counselor’s job is to focus primarily on students, it is impossible to be successful without effectively serving the needs of both of these groups as well.

The book ends with Chapter 12, which contains some personal thoughts on what we counselors do and why, and an appendix with some examples of helpful resources that are available for school counselors.

To make the best use of this book, I suggest you first read it through to get a feel for the