New Students Group

I have around 13 (out of 122) new students to the district this year on my 7th grade team.  I have started a new students group that runs once a week during lunch time.  As we all know, lunch is short.  For us, it is only 20 minutes.  By the time the kiddos get their lunch and come up to my room, we have 15 minutes to complete some meaningful stuff ... and that is if they remember to come! Some of my groups are so good and show up religiously.  This group is driving me nuts because 4 out of the 13 remember each week.  I have passes made for them and have their homeroom teacher or lunch block teacher remind them.  This is an issue I need to address; however, not the purpose of this post. 

Today we did a lesson on comfort zones.  I adapted this lesson from Raising Student Aspirations: Classroom Activities for Grades 9-12  by Russell J. Quaglia and Kristine M. Fox and made it my own and appropriate for 7th graders.

(Comfort Zones - Counselor's Room)

The overall concept of the lesson is for the students to recognize what activities or situations are in their comfort zone, challenge zone or panic zone.  Once all the students have individually completed their zone sheet, they went up to my white board to share.  It was eye-opening for the students to see that some activities and situations were in a comfort zone for some, while in a challenge zone or panic zone for others (see below).  What we really went into detail about was which zone each felt when coming to a new school.  As you can see, everyone's comfort zone was different! The students shared why and how they could move an activity or situation down a zone.  Insightful lesson that went smoothly (regardless of attendance) !!! Feeling accomplished today :)

October

8 months later and I'm back in action. I landed my dream job last winter and started literally the day before state testing. Next thing I knew, it was summer. Now I feel like this year has finally settled down and I can finally focus back on what I wanted to accomplish here.

October is an awesome month for more reasons than just it being my birthday month! This is national SIDS awareness month, breast cancer awareness month and bullying prevention month. We have rolled out our BE KIND program and I could not be more excited.

We have received a grant and some of my fellow counselors, social worker and art teachers have been working hard to program and promote our Be Kind campaign. Teachers and staff can recognize students for being kind.  These students will be recognized by a staff member by receiving a BE KIND nomination slip. When the students receive the slip, the will drop the slip into the BE KIND box in the office.  At the end of each marking period we will draw names from the box to invite and reward those to attend a BE KIND breakfast that recognizes those who have been kind and stepped up to do the right thing. I love the idea of this because it has the opportunity to recognize all students, not only those who are recognized for academics. 

We have also started up a BE KIND twitter page where students and staff who follow @falconbekind can direct message me compliments of students or staff in school (please see @osseonicethings as they have been my inspiration). I will then anonymously tweet these compliments. I am very excited to promote social media in a positive way and spread kindness. 

Yeayyyy to my first real blog post. Sorry it took so long; however, it represents a lot of what I want to do in my role of a school counselor!  Here's to National Bullying Prevention Month!