One of the directors of school counseling that my district had used to talk about RAGS – “random acts of guidance services.” It’s where you basically just do school counseling things without critically thinking about your school or program as a whole. And it’s not ideal, because while something is absolutely better than nothing when […]
5 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Next SEL Lesson or Group Counseling Session
Those who know me know that I am downright evangelical about planning out my school counseling services. It’s not that I don’t see value in what can naturally occur within an SEL lesson or counseling session, it’s that I want to set myself and my students up for success and that means having a great […]
Activities for Developing Resiliency in Kids
Everyone wants to be resilient, right? We want to be able to handle whatever comes our way and keep on keeping on towards our goals. We want to be able to bounce back from problems and setbacks. And, we want to help the children we serve to develop resiliency as well. Whether it’s a traumatic […]
Books About Anxiety for Kids
One research-based anxiety activity for kids is modeling, which means demonstrating for children how to handly anxiety. There’s lots of ways to do this! One is through bibliotherapy. There are lots of books about anxiety for kids out there, but this post is highlighting our absolute favorites – and sharing why we think they’re helpful. […]
Using Group Counseling Data
Several years ago, I wrote a blog post all about evaluating the effectiveness of your group counseling services. I shared some more about it in my tier 2 virtual training. It wasn’t enough, though! Because I left out some of the nitty-gritty details around actually analyzing the data. I’m rectifying that mistake by breaking down […]
Progress Monitoring in Group Counseling
I previously wrote a whole blog post about group counseling data which you can find here, as well as a post about how to actually analyze group counseling data. You might want to check those out before or after reading this one on progress monitoring in group counseling! For many years, pre and post-surveys were […]
What do you do with universal screener data?
After my first experience using a social-emotional-behavioral screener, I wrote a post sharing what the experience was like. I touched a little on how I used the data, but I’ve continued to get more (really great!) questions asking for more details. This post answers the question “What exactly do I do after I’ve used a […]
Research-Based Anxiety Activities for Kids
Anxiety is a huge issue with youth right now in America. So much so, that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force is officially recommending all kids eight to eighteen be screened for anxiety at their pediatricians’ office! While it’s bad news that anxiety is so prevalent in our kids, the good news is that there […]
Using a Sand Tray in School Counseling
Shortly after graduating from grad school, I traveled a couple of states over with a friend to attend a sand tray therapy for kids training. It really increased my confidence in using it and it became one of my most used tools as both a school-based therapist (my role at the time) and a school […]
