10 Back To School Essentials for School Counselors 10 Hot Summer Buys To Get Ready For The Fall 10 Must Have Office and Wardrobe Additions for Back To School With summer break looming or already here for many school counselors around the US – the fall still leaves a lot of questions in terms of what school will look like with the COVID-19 outbreak and mitigation measures. I was poking around Etsy the other day and found some great items that I think make a super BTS roundup. Check out the items below that make up the 10 Must Have Back To School Essentials for School Counselors to get your off ..read more

Running Your First Course Fair Emulating Effective Practices  Something I have always been boggled by is how we, educators, often don’t utilize the tools, techniques and processes that many other industries have mastered and dump tons of money into because they have realized their value. I have talked about it with the idea of branding and marketing many times, in fact. However, another thing that I think we can tap into comes from the University world and the HR domain – the idea of information fairs. If you work or have worked in admissions or as a high school counselor – there is a hig ..read more

The Ultimate School Counseling Hack ChatGPT for School Counselors How School Counselors Can Use ChatGPT to Enhance Their Comprehensive School Counseling Programs As schools continue to evolve and adapt to new challenges, one thing remains constant: the importance of providing comprehensive counseling services to support student well-being and success. However, traditional counseling approaches can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, making it difficult for schools to provide the level of support that students need. That’s where ChatGPT comes in. As a powerful language model, ChatGPT ha ..read more

Dear David: An Open Letter to The College Board Dear David: It’s Time You Listened Mr. Coleman et al – as I pen this letter of frustration, it is the week before the annual two weeks of AP Exams. So yes – my frustrations are high already. But this has been long coming. The amount of time that I am required to spend as a school counselor is absurd to fulfill the needs and expectations of your massive organization. I, personally and professionally, am over it. I would like to point out several things and demand that several key things start to change immediately.   1. College Board is too b ..read more

Live Streaming Your Counseling Workshops A Guide from Start to Finish Why would we want to live stream and record our meetings? Welcome back to another (hopefully a little more normal) school year. It’s been some time since my last post and I am excited to be able to write some content for you after spending all my extra time with my family (we’ve got a 5 year old and a 1 year old as of this writing). In this post – I would like to share a guide to help you take your in-person workshops and make them accessible both live and as an archived video using some free and easy tools. Why should I w ..read more

15 Minute Tech Tools for school counselors The Amazing 6 Part Video Tutorial Miniseries Great for COVID-19 Lockdown/Quarentine – but also great for everyday use as a school counselor. I want to share the complete box set of the FREE 15 Minute Tech Tools, six part video tutorial miniseries for school counselors, teachers and other educators. I know that most of us are usually busy, be it with work or life. I noticed a plethora (50 cent word right there) of professional development resource available (check out CASC/WSCA’s resource page if you haven’t yet: https://covid19k12counseling.org ..read more

ASCA 2018 Presentation - Make Your School Counseling Program POP with PR and Marketing Check out our presentation from the 2018 ASCA Conference in LA. Marketing Matters I am all for open source and when possible – I make my resources free. I had the opportunity to present with Franciene Sabens at the 2018 American School Counselor Association conference in July 2018 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. We presented on using marketing tools and techniques in the school counseling profession. While the slide deck doesn’t capture everything we covered – it does have some great links and you can ..read more

What's in a name? Why being called a school counselor matters. School Counselor vs. Guidance Counselor: I didn’t always get it. I am still a baby when it comes to time served as a school counselor – starting in the profession in 2012. When I was going through graduate school and even in the first year or two of work – I felt it was silly to be so concerned about what we were called as a professional title. School counselor…guidance counselor (henceforth “the G-word”) – it was all semantics in my mind. How much really could our title impact the work that we do daily with students? Why do w ..read more

The Other Side of the Submit Button Holding a HS College Admissions Case Study Watch our 2nd Annual Case StudyDownload My College SWAG Letter Template College Admissions Case Study 101:   2018 was the third year that my school hosted our annual College Admissions Case Study event and it was a huge hit for the third year running. Not familiar with a Case Study? Don’t worry – I am going to walk you through what it is and how to run your first one over the next few minutes. Be sure to check out some of the links above and below for resources, tools and other tutorials I use to make it run s ..read more