School Counselor Blog

Emily was one of the first school counselors to be featured in the School Counselor Spotlight with her Kindness Garden Bulletin Board .  Emily shared another creative and affordable idea promoting kindness. Emily wrote: My Kindness Garden Bulletin Board  was a previous spotlight of yours, but I did something different in my new school this year that I thought you would enjoy. I have switched schools and districts, and now I split my time between an Early Learning Center (Kindergarten) and Primary Center (Grades 1-2). My lesson plan for the first half of this year has been focusing on teaching pro-social behaviors. I began the year by reading Have You Filled a Bucket Today? at the Primary Center and Fill a Bucket: A Guide to Daily Happiness for the Young Child  (both by Carol McCloud) with the Early Learning Center classes. This lead to different lessons with each grade level, focusing on quality compliments with 2nd grade. Our culminating activity in 2...

My fifth grade self-esteem group ended with a bang today!  Students left group empowered and booming with self-esteem! I used  Firework  to start a dialog about being proud of who you are and being true to yourself. I played Firework for students on my iPhone using my portable speaker . I gave them all a copy of the lyrics and asked them to pay careful attention to the words as the song was playing. Afterwards Firework  was over, we discussed the song and it's meaning. I asked students if there were any parts of the song that stuck out to them. One student stated that  "a paper bag drifting through the wind" feels "lonely and left out." Another student stated that "a house of cards one blow from caving in" would be easily "put down" or "pushed down." Students spoke of times when they felt down or when they felt like the did not have any friends. Students were eager to come up with a message of what the song meant to the...

I love all of the different bucket-filling books that exist. I recently used bucket-filling books in the self-esteem group I co-facilitate with my intern. This activity teaches students how to give quality compliments and creates a bucket-filling extravaganza!  Bucket-filling books and supplies Bucket-Filling Books For this activity, I read  Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  by Carol McCloud to students and briefly showed them other examples of how buckets could be filled or emptied from  How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids  by Tom Rath and Growing Up with a Bucket Full of Happiness: Three Rules for a Happier Life  by Carol McCloud. All of the bucket-filling books are great at explaining bucket-filling and how buckets can be filled or emptied. (Side note:  How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids  by Tom Rath and  Growing Up with a Bucket Full of Happiness: Three Rules for a Happier Life  by Carol McCloud were received through a...

"Put Up" Designed by student council member side two One of my roles at school, in addition to my role as a school counselor, is co-advising student council with the other school counselor.  One of many the benefits of co-advising student council (especially with another counselor!) is the opportunity to facilitate school-wide programing aligned with our school counseling program. At our first student council meeting in January, we told the students we were interested in hosting " No Name Calling Week ," January 24th - 28th.  We explained that "No Name Calling Week" is a week-long event to foster dialogue about bullying and disrespect.  The students were very excited and began brainstorming ideas.  One of the students had an idea to make and sell "Put-Ups," an alternative to "put-downs."  I was very impressed with her idea, because I have a lesson from Teaching Tolerance about "Put-Ups," but I have not facilitated it a...