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Tag: High School

Nine Points to Consider When Working With Brand-New Students

Nine Points to Consider When Working With Brand-New Students

Every year, new students arrive to each and every school–many, at the beginning of the school year; others, arriving at different, various points as the year progresses. With this reality in mind, I wanted to take a look at several things to consider when helping new students get acclimated and comfortable in their newest educational setting. 1. Carve Out Adequate Time to Meet With the New Student(s): This may sound a bit naive, but when I was a brand-new counselor,…

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Five Reasons Why School Counselors Should Consider Keeping School Supplies and Food in Their Offices

Five Reasons Why School Counselors Should Consider Keeping School Supplies and Food in Their Offices

When I got my (first and current) school counseling job, one of the first things I decided to do was keep a designated space in my office for students to gather-up needed (free) school supplies or to grab a quick snack. Sure, this ends up costing several hundred dollars a year (probably similar to what a lot of teachers spend to stock their classrooms), but the pay-off is more than worth it in my mind. If you are a savvy…

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Building a Brand: A Blue-Collar Counselor’s Journey From the Beginning

Building a Brand: A Blue-Collar Counselor’s Journey From the Beginning

In this first of a two-part series on branding, I take a look at the Blue-Collar Counselor moniker, while also taking a trip down memory lane. The Blue-Collar Counselor Goes to School: It seems that I have always been interested in people and places. Maybe it goes back to elementary school, where, every year, I expeditiously leafed through my Social Studies books looking for all the colorful graphs, charts, maps, and pictures to study that could be contained within the…

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Freshmen Transitions: Helping School Counselors Maximize Their Effectiveness When Working With New Students

Freshmen Transitions: Helping School Counselors Maximize Their Effectiveness When Working With New Students

One of the most important—and often hardest—transitions in school for students is the 8th Grade to 9th Grade (or middle school to high school) transition. Suddenly, students find themselves going from being at the highest end of the social hierarchy order in their middle school buildings to quickly having to adjust to being at the lowest end of the hierarchy order in a brand new, and often larger-sized, building. These students also find themselves, simultaneously, having to adjust to a…

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