School Counselor Blog

I have received many inquiries about my work with children of incarcerated parents. Parental Incarceration impacts millions of U.S. Children. According to the Family and Corrections Network , 7 million, or one in 10, U.S. children have a parent under some form of criminal justice supervision - in jail, prison, on probation, or on parole. There are unique problems and stressors created by parental incarceration. Children often face a form of imprisonment of their own when a parent is taken away. Children of incarcerated parents are often difficult to identify because of the shame and social stigma associated with incarceration. In spring of 2009 I ran groups for children of incarcerated parents. There are some really great resources available for learning about children of incarcerated parents. Many of the resources can be used in individual and group counseling. A website to start learning about children of incarcerated parents is The National Research Center on Children and ...

It's crazy to think Thanksgiving is next week! It feels like just yesterday it was August! I wanted to share about groups I have been running so far this year and groups I plan to start in the near future. G.I.R.L.S. Groups I am running two sixth grade girls groups, and one seventh grade girls group using  Girls in Real Life Situations (G.I.R.L.S.) curriculum by Julia V. Taylor. The groups are going great! The Girls in Real Life Situations curriculum is working out really well. Girls in Real Life Situations covers a myriad of topics including self esteem, friendships, and stress. I love that the curriculum is flexible and enables the facilitator to pick and choose which activities to facilitate for each topic! I have used some of the activities in the Girls in Real Life Situations with other groups I am running too! I will be writing a review about the Girls in Real Life Situations curriculum in a future post. Grief and Loss Groups I am currently running two grief and loss...

School Counselor Blog hosted a back to school contest with a different giveaway each day from September 1st to September 10th! Below is a recap of all the giveaway items from the contest. Although the contest is now closed, you can visit the posts and get TONS of ideas of how to use each of these awesome resources! Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the contest and congratulations to the contest winners!  Your participation in this contest will help other school counselors gain creative ideas to utilize these awesome resources in their work with students! Also thank you to the sponsors of this contest, Free Spirit , Really Good Stuff , Research Press , and School Counselor Blog  for donating the giveaway items! Good-Bye Bully Machine Book and Good-Bye Bully Machine Card Game The giveaway for Day 1 of the  School Counselor Blog Back to School Contest  was the  Good-Bye Bully Machine  book  and the  Good-Bye Bull...