Oh Fudge!

It's tradition for my boyfriend and I to go stroll through Target after our Friday Date Night. He likes the electronic section and I went to get wrapping paper and check out the dollar aisle for some stress balls. I don't know about you all but I LOVE Target's Dollar Spot I can always find so many things to use in my office that I have to stop myself from buying too much. My students love stress balls and I have been giving out a lot of them lately so I have been looking for some new ones and I found an awesome one! However this one will stay on my desk :). Where do you all buy stress balls? I have seen some cool ones in the Oriental Trade catalog but am not sure how good they are. The Christmas Story movie is one of my favorites and so I was super excited to find this!

The Giving Season: Lesson 1

This time of year is truly one of my favorites not only because it means I get to see my family and get two weeks off of work but for the true meaning of the season. One of my most favorite lessons starts off with The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It is a simple lesson with a big meaning. Now I have in the past read the book to the kids but I recently found a video on You Tube that I thought I would try to use and see how the kids liked it. It is an old video from 1973 read by Shel Silverstein and I thought that I may have kids falling asleep during it because it is a slow moving movie that runs around 9 minutes but I found the kids laughing, gasping, and crying throughout the movie so it will definitely be a lesson that I keep. It has become one of my favorite lessons because it is versatile and you can use it to talk about giving, compassion, friendship, needs vs. wants, etc. I have found that almost every time I do this lesson each class finds a different meaning of it for them and we discuss it together.

After watching the movie we talk about the people that are giving in their lives, how we can be better givers, why is it important to give to others, are there things that we can give to others that we cannot see (i.e. friendship, love, gratitude, kindness), etc. Now because this lesson is usually done around Thanksgiving I like to have the kids write thank you notes to people in their lives that give to them - something I don't think is done often enough. Sometimes I feel that even adults don't realize how important it is to just stop and Thank the people in our lives that we are thankful for and why. Maybe that person doesn't realize how much they are appreciated - like the Tree in the book and it's a great time of year to remind them! We write them to school staff, parents, sisters/brothers, grandparents, friends, teachers, whoever they want to write them to. I like to start off with their teachers and make it a "surprise" for the teacher which the kids seem to love doing and the teachers have loved receiving all the kind notes from their students. While they are writing the Thank You notes I play this song which I LOVE and it helps with classroom management as well because the kids will sit, write their notes, and watch the video (while swaying to the music). The Smart Board slide that I show with this music video is titled "Give Back to Those Who Stand By You!" Some kids don't get into writing the notes but they love listening and swaying to this song and so do I! Sometimes I play this song while we journal after talking about bullying as well - it's a great versatile song to keep on hand when you need it!

 

Here are the note cards I made to use with this lesson.

My Office...in progress

I wanted to post some pictures of my office and what we have done to it so far. It is a work in progress for sure! I am currently sharing the office with my awesome counter part School Counselor so we have very little time to actually organize but we still love it! So when I went to upload these pictures I realized just how messy it may seem as we were organizing Thanksgiving baskets and they were all over the floor so in order to not look like a total mess I thought I would show you all my favorite sign of all that I got for Christmas last year. My office is at the end of a long hallway and with the door open all you see is the colorful sign and I love that! I believe it was purchased from Target if anyone is interested in still purchasing it. I have seen smaller versions of it at both Bed, Bath, and Beyond & TJMaxx. Yes, I still have the corner protectors on there because I had to put sticky tape on the back of them to hang it up on the cinder block wall and not ruin it! :) Once our office recovers from Thanksgiving I will post more pictures!

My new office decor...

My office was repainted this year and the walls were bare when I arrived in August. Around the same time of the year Groupon had a great sale on VistaPrint merchandise where if you paid $17 dollars you would get $70 in product, so I bought it. I had never used VistaPrint before and I wanted to try it after reading about it on the School Counselor Blog by, Danielle Shultz, which I love!

If you haven't heard of VistaPrint they are a company that specializes in low quantity, high quality, affordable customized products. In addition to the $70 dollars worth of product that I received I also was able to get a FREE personalized stamp with "To the Parents or Guardians of:" on it because this is something that I write over and over again throughout the year so I thought it would be nice to have this. I only got one of these but I now wish that I had paid the extra couple of dollars for the additional stamp because I have used it so often I am afraid it will run out of ink (something I will report back on!).

I also made myself a shirt based on a bulletin board that I made last year. I did not come up with this but I cannot at this point remember where I found the idea but I did put it on the shirt. I used a puzzle piece that is a graphic that Vista Print already had and I just added the words - I LOVE this shirt because it has started a lot of conversations with the kids about what I do. I think it's great to see kids read my shirt, look puzzled, and then say something "oh yeah". On Fridays, our school is able to "dress down" and most of our staff wears college shirts but I wanted something different and this works! Don't get me wrong I still represent my George Mason Patriots and Old Dominion Monarchs but this is a fun alternative!

Now for my office walls I made a couple signs from the suggestions from Danielle Shultz again from School Counselor Blog and here is what I did. I made her suggested "What you say in here, stays in here" sign, Group expectations sign (which I added/changed a couple things from Danielle's), and a couple quotes that I love and wanted to put on my walls in our school colors. What do you think? I am really happy with the outcome of my order and am watching Groupon so that I can do this again!

Repurposed Counselor's Mailbox

In my school we have these old mailboxes on several random doors that don't seem to have any purpose other than for kids to put trash in or to flick the lid up and down as they pass them. I happened to be in need of a new place for kids to put their requests to see the counselor slips so I took one of them (with my principals permission of course) to re-purpose  Last year I made one from a manila envelope and it was looking pretty rough. I try to be crafty but I am not very good at it so here is what I did. My first thought was to spray paint it but I found it to be too bent up and thought it would show so much that it would not be that attractive. So I grabbed my favorite tool, my glue gun, and got to work with some scrap paper that I had left over.


I cut the paper to fit the lid and I then hot glued it a lot so that hopefully it will not come off throughout this year (I plan on covering it differently next year). I then took a 5x7 manila envelope and cut about two inches off of the bottom to hold the request to see the counselor slips which I glued to the front of the mailbox. I took twine to tie a pen to the box  through the conveniently located hole in the middle of the box so I tied a knot on the other end to hold it in.

I liked the way it turned out and am happy with it. The kids seem to like it and it does the job!

Request to the Counselor slips.
Comment with your email address
and I will send you the template.

Why blog?

A couple things about me...I am not a writer and I am not sure I can be a blogger, I am a horrible speller (thank god for spell check! In fact I wish I had an internal spell check because as I take notes in meetings I often find myself scribbling out words or writing sp* next to it so that if someone sees my notes they realize that I am aware of my horrible spelling), I am ADHD so please go easy on me if I start talking about one thing and end up discussing something completely different before finalizing my thoughts, and I am absolutely loving my "job" which I place in quotes because everyday I leave thinking, "that was fun I cannot wait until tomorrow", then is it really a "job" or "work"?

My name is Stephanie and I am an Elementary School Counselor in South West, Virginia. I am a K-12 Certified School Counselor, a Nationally Certified Counselor, a MICHE Representative, a girlfriend (of 11 years...yes I know I know), a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, and the author of this blog. I list so many because I find that school counseling often takes over my life, my thoughts, my plans and I must become better at time management and remembering what is MOST important to me and that is my wonderful family and friends. As a 2nd year Professional School Counselor (PSC) I know that this will become easier as time goes by and I find my groove but for right now it can be overwhelming. I find that I have so many ideas and that I want to help everyone (and have a hard time saying no) so I really have to prioritize and realize that sometimes the ideas will have to wait until next school year so that I so not overload myself. 

I get very excited talking about School Counseling and the awesome things we get to do. So, the reason that I wanted to start this blog is to share ideas with fellow PSCs, get insight, and through this hopefully learn how to be the best School Counselor I can be while continuing to also fill the many other roles in my life that often get neglected. In grad school they pressed self-care and burnout so much and I thought it was a little over kill but I realize now why and I hope that this blog can help me figure out the best way to care for myself and my kiddos at school.