65. Middle School Counseling

Brittany 0:00

Welcome to The teaching Toolbox Podcast. I have a slight cold today, so please excuse my voice, but I have my friend Ellie here.

Ellie 0:29

Hello,

Brittany 0:31

And we have a wonderful episode of the teaching toolbox for you to enjoy. Today, we're going to talk about the inside scoop of school counselors, what they wish you knew, what they'd like you to ask and more. And to give you that inside scoop, we have Carol Miller with us from the counselor chat podcast.

Carol 0:51

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to share what I know.

Ellie 0:57

Yeah, I'm excited to hear all about everything you know. It's so nice to have you here. Before we chat about other things, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, like, what your counselor career has been like, what types of schools you were or are in, grade levels, that kind of thing?

Carol 1:15

Well, I like to think that I really just began my career, but really I've been doing this for over 30 years now, and every day still feels like it's year one, almost. I absolutely love it, and currently, I'm actually a school counselor at an elementary school. We're a K-6 building, and I'm assigned the older students, so I have the fifth and sixth graders. But just prior to that, I was a middle school counselor. And I was a middle school counselor for about 15 years in total, and that was a five through eight building, and before that, I worked at a high school for equally as long.

Ellie 1:56

Okay, nice. So you started high and then

Carol 1:59

just kept moving down,

Ellie 2:01

that's good because then you knew where they were going, you know, as you got to each new level.

Carol 2:06

Yeah, exactly. Let's see. What else can I tell you? In addition to being a school counselor, I'm really active in our state association for school counselors. So I was a past president for the New York State School Counselor Association. I do a lot of things regarding school counseling.

Ellie 2:24

That's awesome.

Carol 2:25

And I also have won a couple Awards, the New York State School Counselor of the Year Award, as well as their lifetime career achievement award.

Brittany 2:33

Wow. Great job.

Ellie 2:35

Congratulations. That's awesome.

Brittany 2:37

Congratulations.

Ellie 2:38

I also hear that you have published some books.

Carol 2:41

I have! I wrote those while I was a middle school counselor, and they are for group counseling. One is called Starbound. It's a leadership and empowerment group for girls. And the other one is called Building Champions, and it's similar, but it's for our boys that are out there.

Ellie 2:59

Very cool. We'll link those in the show notes, in case anybody would like to check those out. Well, there are so many things middle school teachers are thinking about, taking care of, working on during the course of the day and week, and sometimes they don't really think about their school counselor until they suddenly have an issue to deal with that might involve the counselor, or they might need the counselor input, you know, for something. So what kind of things do you wish middle school teachers would ask their counselors before they suddenly need the counselor for a problem that they're having with a student or with a parent or something like that?

Carol 3:34

Well, I think one thing is that a lot of teachers really don't see us as being interventionists, but we're really, we're an interventionist for for students. We help kids to, you know, solve behaviors, and we work with kids on their academics, behaviors, and even, you know, at the middle school and the high school level, their college and career needs. I really wish that teachers wouldn't wait so long to see me when they're having problems, because we really we can't work in isolation. We are working with this huge group of individuals. And I think when you work together and trying to solve problems, you go farther. You really can problem solve and troubleshoot and figure out what you need to do, and when you have more hands on deck, it's actually lighter work.

Brittany 4:26

Yeah, are there any other things you wish middle school teachers understood about the school counselor and their role?

Carol 4:31

Well, lessons are pretty crucial for developing empathy, for developing perspective taking, for learning how to problem solve, and, you know, so many other social skills, but these skills, they don't come naturally. They have to really be explicitly taught. And I think most counselors at the middle school level, they don't have their own classroom, so we rely heavily on teachers to kind of borrow theirs, to use theirs. And when we come in and we say, Hey, can I do a lesson? Can I help you out? We really do that because a we want to help you out. And if we can teach kids these skills, well, then maybe we're not going to have so many problem behaviors inside the classroom. Maybe the little bit of time that we're stealing can actually make the overall classroom community go a little better.

Ellie 5:30

I like that you said that because I feel there are times that teachers might be like, Well, I don't have time to have a lesson. I don't have time to have somebody come in. But if they do take that time, then it can, you know, make other parts of their day and other parts of their year a little more smooth, and, you know, maybe nip some of those behavior issues in the bud kind of thing.

Carol 5:50

Exactly,

Brittany 5:51

Kind of like what we've talked about before, where sometimes, if you go slower at the beginning and you deal with expectations and behavior and stuff it really makes you know your February, March, April, go a lot smoother.

Carol 6:06

Exactly. I think there's a saying that says you have to slow down before you can speed up. This is it!

Brittany 6:12

Yes, absolutely.

Ellie 6:14

Are there some other ways counselors might wish they could support middle school teachers besides lessons, but maybe they need teachers to ask about it, or, you know, kind of let them into the classroom? Are there other things we might not be thinking of?

Carol 6:27

Just that we really are here to help. We're kind of like the experts in the whole social, emotional, and behavior realm. So when we come in and we're trying to suggest things. It's not because we want to make your job harder. We truly don't want to do that. And I know sometimes I've seen teachers and they're like, Oh, here she comes. She's going to want me to do something else with this kid. I just don't have the time, the energy, and I gotta get ready for this test. That's not what we want to do. We want to truly make your life easier. We want to have you make those connections with the kid. And it really is all about those connections. And if you can foster that, it's like magic. It's a magic wand. So we're just here to help.

Ellie 7:16

Yeah, and it'd be nice if teachers had the time to just kind of sit down with their counselor, maybe at a prep time or something like that, just to maybe get some tips, because you might be having an issue in the classroom, and you might want to call the counselor in that moment, but they're not available. So if you can get some tips and strategies from your counselor, so that you know what you might be able to do if you can't reach that person in a time of need, then that might be really helpful, too.

Carol 7:46

Or, you know, if you're just having a regular day, invite the counselor into your classroom as well. Because sometimes just sitting down and seeing that kid in action can give us a whole new point of view as well. Because usually there was this meme that went around social media for a while where this kid is, like, holding a teddy bear, and it says, you know, I just sent this kid out of class, and here he's come back, you know, with all these rewards. And I sometimes think that teachers think that that's what they're coming to me for. They're getting that, you know, that candy bar or that lollipop, and then I'm going to send them back to class, but that's really not what's going on. But I have to say, when kids are usually with me, even when they're all amped up, I have a different relationship with them, where I'm not pushing the academics or like, come on, we got to get going here - it's more relaxed. And so they're more likely to tell me so much stuff. And I see them in a different light than classroom teachers, too. So when we can kind of cross those boundaries and those borders of having the teacher see what I see, and then me seeing what the teachers see, then we really we can make some better connections and make a better plan for kids.

Ellie 9:09

That makes sense.

Brittany 9:12

Yeah. I'm thinking about the student perspective for a moment. How might students expect their relationship with the middle school counselor to be different or similar to the elementary counselor?

Carol 9:23

Well, I can tell you, as an elementary counselor, I am in charge of doing lessons every week. I have my groups that I meet with. It's very different. At the elementary school, we're really focused in on that tier one, all those preventative type of instructional things, from what is bullying, how to be a good friend, and how to regulate our emotions and how to even identify them. Whereas at the middle school, because we're not really teaching as many lessons as maybe we would like to, we have more groups, we're really concerned about the academics, the attendance, and getting them ready for high school and beyond that they don't really have to worry about when they're in elementary.

Yeah,

In elementary, you're just like wiping tears and making sure that the kids are doing what they have to do.

Yeah, I think the only lessons our counselors came in for in sixth grade, were mostly the career things. They had different - they had booklets, and they had different parts of that that they had to get through at each grade level. And so those would kind of be the only lessons we would end up having as the ones that were related to that.

And I would say when I was in middle school, that's the majority of the lessons that I did, although I was able to squeeze a few extra things in there, especially when teachers were absent, and if I knew they were going to be absent, I would say, Hey, can I take over your class for a day? And sometimes that's better than having a sub, because they know me, and then they don't have to make sub plans either they're like, it was kind of sweet. It's a great way to get your counselor into your classroom and maybe have to do a little less work.

I like that.

We had some lessons on like development, like body odor and and that kind of thing that our counselor would do.

Yeah, Axe doesn't cover it all.

Yeah, can you come in and talk about that? Yeah, that's true!

When you were in middle school, do you still do, like the small groups, where you'd have a girls group and a boys group and talk about, I don't know, suicide prevention or bullying or getting along with others?

I think at the middle school level, I probably did more suicide screenings than I did for any other grade level.

okay,

More than high school kids, definitely way more than Elementary and it always seemed to be the eighth graders that I was doing the most risk assessment. because I think they're at that age where they are really figuring out who they are, but they're so dependent on everyone, right? They can't drive, they can't go to work, yet, they can't do all these things, and they're really trying to figure out who they are, and so sometimes they come into clash a little bit.

yeah,

But eighth grade, that was always the big year. But I think in terms of small groups, I know I definitely had more small groups in the middle school than I did in either high school or elementary.

All right, thank you.

We were lucky that every week we did get to meet with our counselor no matter what grade level we were at. We had different counselors for different grade levels, but they would come into a team meeting every week, so we at least had that opportunity to see them, and talk to them, and share any concerns on a weekly basis. So that was really nice. So if you know, if you're someone out there and you don't get to meet with your counselor on a weekly basis, maybe that's something you could start, you know, touch base with your counselor, see if there's a time that you can meet.

Yeah, that'd be nice. Y

Yeah, that's what I would do in my middle school, is I would go weekly to the different teams.

So every school is different, as we're finding out. You know, some have had larger schools, some has had smaller schools, and as are teachers and counselors. But as we get toward the end of our episode here, what do you think are two or three great ways for classroom teachers and counselors to work together as team?

The first thing is to really view student success as a team approach. You know, you can't work in isolation. You just can't. If teachers are having trouble with their particular student, maybe think about having a mediation. I did a ton of these when I worked in the middle school, and they're great. And so we would have a teacher and a student who were just clashing with each other. And I'm sure you know, if you're working with middle schoolers, you can picture exactly who that kid is, and - is it coming to you? And the teacher would come to me with the frustrations and vent, and sometimes it would be like, Hey, I love that you're venting, but let's try to figure out a way that you keep your sanity here. And having a little mediation can be a really great thing. And what that involves is usually me, the student, the teacher, all sitting down, and we're just going to hear both sides of it. Like, tell me, kiddo, what's going on, what made you or what were you thinking about before this action happened? How were you feeling when you were misbehaving? How did you feel afterwards? What do you wish your teacher knew? And so they can share all this information, and sometimes the teacher is like, wow, I never knew that before. I didn't realize that this was going on in their home, or all these things. But on the other side of it, when a teacher can sit down with a kid and say, Listen, every time you shout out, or you put your head down, or you do any of these behaviors that are really distracting, you know, it takes away from the rest of the class. And you know what? I feel really bad, because I promised the kids in our classroom that today we were going to have something fun to do if we covered, you know, X, Y and Z. But we didn't get to cover it, because I had to keep correcting you, I had to keep yelling at you, I had to keep doing all this stuff. And so now I'm feeling like I let all these kids down. Or when a teacher says, Listen, I spent four hours on this lesson last night just to try to make it fun and entertaining, and it went to shambles because kids don't realize that there's prep work involved. Teachers are like human beings with lives outside of school. No, we don't have cots. We don't sleep there,

Right. Right.

So having them realize that, you know, there's different size, there's different perspectives, is really, really powerful, and it can really move mountains. It can really make huge, huge changes. So I think for classroom teachers and working together as a team, when we work together and we try to figure out, you know, how we can connect with that kid, how we can make a difference in their lives, how we can change behavior. We really can do great things.

Yes. very much so. Well, what a great discussion this has been. Thank you so much, Carol for sharing all your brilliant ideas with us. I am positive listeners will have heard something that they can add to their teaching toolbox. Before we go. Where can people find you?

Well, I am on Facebook and Instagram as counseling essentials, and you can find me there, mostly on Facebook because I pay a little bit more attention to Facebook, but definitely on on both of those.

And we'll link those links in the show notes so people can find you easily.

Well, thank you so much.

Yes, thank you. Please take a second listeners to share this episode with your teacher besties so they can get to know their school counselor too. We'll talk with you later. Bye,

bye.