Must-Haves Revealed: Upgrade Your School Counseling Space

Hello there, my school counseling friend. How you doing? I hope you are looking forward to the summer, to all of the fun things that are coming up for you vacations, maybe taking a break whatever's in store for you. I hope that it has started off well. I'm glad you're back here with me for another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast, and this week we've got a great topic of conversation. It's one that many of you look forward to. Each and every year It becomes a really hot topic around social media and such, and that is talking about what you're going to be investing in, what you're going to be adding to your counseling room for next year. What are your must haves? And I know there are many of you out there getting ready to start your very first counseling job. You're so excited. You're planning on getting all the things right, mapping it all out, trying to figure out how to get your hands on some of the things that you most want for serving students. And then we have other school counselors like me who have experience in the field. We kind of have our routines down. We know what we like to use, but we're always looking for something extra. We're always looking for something a little bit more fun, a change of pace or something new and dynamic to bring to our school counseling offices, and so this episode is going to be for everyone. You're going to hear something in here, i guarantee it, that you haven't heard of before. Before we hop into that, i would love to share our most recent review for the podcast with you. It was submitted by VitalEarth And they titled their review Super Practical. I love that all ready, because you guys know we aim to make this podcast very down to earth, right, real world school counseling practical for you. The review goes on to say love School for School Counselors podcast and the school counselor support. Very practical and down to earth as well as evidence-based information. Thanks so much, vitalearth. We appreciate that more than you know And I appreciate you noticing that and letting other people know how we strive to serve everyone through a real world lens of school counseling as well as through some evidence-based. That's not something that you hear and a lot of podcasts, but we think it's super important, right, because it maintains our professional integrity, it elevates our profession And it really positions us in a prime spot for effective advocacy. So thanks again for that review. If you haven't submitted a review for the podcast. Yet what are you waiting for? We are on our way. We want to be number one in our category, but we need your help getting the word out about how the School for School Counselors podcast has influenced you. So if it's been helpful in any way, if there's anything that you enjoy about the podcast, please take a moment, hop on an Apple device, borrow one if you got to, and submit that review. All right, so this week we're getting into our School Counseling Must-Haves, and we decided to do something a little bit different this year. What we decided to do was pull all of our 8,000 plus members in our Facebook group to see what are the must-haves that most school counselors are relying on. What are your go-tos, what are the items that you love? We gave several categories and let everybody just go to town to tell us all the things that they have and all the things they're using. Some of the categories were things you would expect, like technology tools, books and games, but then we had some fun categories in there too, like snacks What kind of snacks are people keeping on hand in their offices? So this is going to be a super fun discussion And I'm going to let you know about some of the must-haves that I saw going past in the list and some of the ones that I looked at and said, ooh, i think I may need to find one of those. I may need to get that. So I'll tell you about those as well. The best part of the conversation is going to be that we have made this list available to you Free of charge. We want to just empower all of our school counseling friends and colleagues so you can grab the full list. It's over on our website, schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash must haves. That's all one word, and not only When you go over there will you get a list of the things that your colleagues are recommending, but you're also going to get the links So you can just go straight to the items and snatch them up if you need them. So it should be a quick trip. And just to be on the up and up, a small disclaimer we might make a teeny tiny commission off of it Y'all. That's not why we do this. It's just the way that Amazon structures their storefronts. So please don't think this is a get rich quick scheme for us. We have no interest in that. We are here to serve you and serve you to the very best of our ability. So go grab that must haves list. All right, before we hop into any categories or specific items, there are two things that I kind of want to bring to your attention as you're considering all of the items you might want to be putting into your office this next year. Number one make sure, as you're collecting these items, that you're really curating your collection. I cannot tell you how it hurts my heart, and it usually happens round about mid August, mid September People start posting pictures of their school counseling offices And what we often see are offices that are very cluttered, offices that have tons of visual stimulation. There are things everywhere and sometimes you know they'll try to put them on shelves and have curtains hiding them, but really you know there is stuff everywhere And I don't know that we really necessarily need that many items. Now, different strokes for different folks, and I'm not here to judge how you're running your counseling office, but I do want to encourage you that for each item you place in your counseling office, do it with intention, cure, rate, a purposeful collection of items that are working for you, not just grabbing as many things as you can out of all the things that people have told you that you need, because, at the end of the day, not only is it going to overwhelm you, it's going to overwhelm your students too. There's a lot of evidence in the literature that the more items that are available to students in a counseling office, the more time they spent browsing those items, trying to make a selection, versus actually selecting something and working with it, so it inhibits your ability to work toward your counseling goal. In addition to curating your collection purposefully, make sure that you're bringing in items that can do multiple jobs intentionally. Now, that sounds kind of complicated, especially if you're just starting out in the school counseling world, but let me give you an example of what I mean by that. This past year, i probably played more games of Candyland than anybody on the planet. This is no joke. It felt like that. For sure. This was the first year that I'd ever put Candyland in my office, believe it or not, and I've been an elementary counselor for a little bit. I'm also a licensed therapist, but I had never had Candyland in my office. However, i had a kiddo this year that I really felt the game would be beneficial for. They were a younger student and we needed to work on some turn taking, some perspective taking and some frustration tolerance, and I had a feeling that Candyland was going to do the trick, and it did, but what was interesting was, as I had Candyland out on my shelf this year, i had tons and tons of students asking hey, can we play Candyland? I love that game. Even some of my older students that I swore would have aged out of the game wanted to play it too. I think there were several reasons for that, but nevertheless I had tons of kids asking to play Candyland, and I bet I played 7,000 games this year. The beauty of it, though, was that I was able to use that very simple game and adapt it to different students' needs. Whereas I had originally selected it for my office to help the young student with impulse control, with perspective taking and with turn taking, it kind of changed with each student, and some were working on coping skills, some were working on emotion identification, some students just needed the connection and the closeness or the nostalgia of playing the game, and even one student I can think of we adapted it to facilitate some role-playing scenarios. There are a ton of different ways that a simple game like that can be adapted, so am I going to be keeping Candyland in my office this year? You betcha, i am, and I feel like I really grew as a practitioner in exploring the different ways that that one game could be played. Now, if I went to Amazon or if I went to teachers pay teachers and tried to look for resources that address the same concerns that I was using Candyland for, i probably could have found a ton right. I could have had resources up to my ears in my office, but instead of pulling eight or ten different resources for different students, i was able to combine them into one simple board game. And so when I talk about curating your collection, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about items that can do multiple jobs, but do them well and do them intentionally, and part of discerning that does come with practice. Part of it does come also with getting some good consultation and being able to talk to folks that already do those kinds of things and saying you know, hey, i'm looking to do this, what do you got? And having a colleague give you some ideas that you can try. So it's definitely a learning curve. Don't feel like you have to get perfect with it, but at the end of the day. I want you to avoid having an office full of a bunch of baloney that you don't really need. All right, so I feel like I've belabored that point enough. Point number one make sure you're curating your collection. Don't grab a bunch of stuff. Make it meaningful, make it do a certain job and be really intentional about the materials and resources that you're selecting. Number two I want you to keep in mind that, while these resources and materials can help you in your counseling endeavors, they should not be relied upon to do all of the work for you. Now, buckle up, because this is a huge pet peeve of mine in school counseling And in my opinion, it's a large part of the reason why our profession as a whole tends to continue to be held back. We haven't been able to elevate ourselves quite as much as we would like to because we continue relying on materials and resources like these printed curriculums that we've gotten online to do the work for us, and essentially, we have not separated our skill set very much from what teachers do. Great teachers deliver material, they teach concepts, they follow up to make sure the students have learned the concepts, and I think that we get tunnel vision sometimes And we start relying on our counseling materials to guide us on that same kind of journey. But, my friends, school counseling isn't just about teaching skills and following up right. We deal with a lot of heavy emotions, we're dealing with a lot of tough situations And no two people are going to respond to the same scenario, to the same set of circumstances, in the same way, and we have to acknowledge the fact that we have expertise beyond the activities that we provide. Can I get an amen on that? I mean, you did not go get your master's degree in counseling so that you could look in a book and say oh well, you know, they're having trouble identifying their feelings, let's go play a game of Candyland. That's not how it works. You've got to do a lot of work on the front end to figure out what you think is going on right, to kind of develop a preliminary hypothesis about what the student's dealing with. You have to be able to invoke all the counseling skills that you learned and practiced and refined in your master's program. You have to listen and watch for things that nobody else would catch, and then you have to make those things mean something. All the slips of speech, all the nonverbal communication you know how all that stuff works And then implement materials, then use resources to guide that student toward their best outcome. But it's so much more than handing them a worksheet and doing it together and saying, well, that's pretty good, i think we're done. Yo, that's not counseling, and I know you know that. So excuse my soapbox moment. I hope that I haven't made you mad, but I do want to make the point very clear. I think that in school counseling we have begun to rely way too much on resources and outside materials And we have forgotten how to rely on our counseling expertise. Can those two things go together in tandem? Absolutely they can, but just be mindful that you're not forsaking one or the other. So as you select items for your offices, do not select them with the idea in mind that they should be doing all the work. There is some research out currently about teachers pay teachers resources that less than 1% of over 500 resources that were downloaded by a research team less than 1% was considered a high level of cognitive demand And over half of those 500 resources were considered very low level tasks. They went on to say that there was a correlation and y'all. I could not make this up. If I tried. I was shocked to read this, but they determined that the cuter the resource looks, the lower the cognitive demand. Isn't that interesting? Now, to be fair, they were not looking specifically at counseling resources And I'm going to be honest with you. There's a lot of things going on in the background with teachers pay teachers and the way that not only those resources are created and put out in the world, but the way that they're promoted. I could go on and on about that for days and probably make a lot of people very angry, so I'm going to keep that part to myself. But the point of the conversation is, whatever you select and I'm not telling you not to go get teachers, pay teachers resources But I am saying be discerning about what you grab. Many of you have your favorite authors that you love to go to and I need something for grief and you go search TPT for grief and you find your favorite counselor author and you download their stuff and you're ready to go And it might be great. It might be fantastic. There are a few people on teachers pay teachers that are making really high quality resources, but there are also many people on there who are not even counselors. They are masquerading and have no counseling background. But there is no vetting process on teachers. Pay teachers to make sure that folks are telling the truth. So be careful about what you're selecting and make sure that the materials are not being relied upon to do all the work for you. Another pet peeve of mine and gosh, you guys are getting in your full today is when I see discussions about you know I have this student that's struggling with grief and you know could be a myriad of situations. It might be they've actually lost a family member. It could be grief with some major life transition. Lots of things can compel a student to experience grief, right, whatever it is. Someone will pop in a social media group and they'll say I'm looking for a resource on grief. What should I use? And almost inevitably, especially on that topic, one of the first responses is we'll just go get a copy of the invisible string and read that with them. Oh, my goodness, it crawls all over me Y'all. Grief is so complicated, right, and it stays with a heart for a while. If you have kids on campus that are grieving for whatever reason, you have to be prepared to follow up and to be a support to them for some time. So I find it a little bit disingenuous to suggest, you know, just sit down and read a book with them and everything will be great. And sometimes I think that's not necessarily the intention, but that's the impression that's given. Just sit down and read this book, do a little activity with them, download the small group curriculum. Bing bang, boom, you're done. That's not how grief works. And if you're in tune with your clinical counseling skills, with your theoretical foundations, you know that most of the time true grief is not resolved that easily. Same thing with curriculums. I kind of mentioned that Small group curriculums are notorious for this. Just provide this Do these eight sessions. Everything should be great And maybe it does work. Maybe some of those are phenomenal at eliciting change. But follow up, collect the data. Do some pre and post assessments, not only post assessments right after the fact. Do post assessments three weeks, six weeks, nine weeks out, to see if the change is sustained, because anybody can show change short term. The question is, can they sustain it? So don't rely on these materials to do all the work. It should not be as easy as. Let me hand this worksheet out. Let's do it together. Now that problem solved. That's not what school counseling is. And the more that we try these kinds of things, the more we appear to be working just like our teachers. And the less clout, the less influence, the less we're going to be able to advocate on our campuses, which is exactly the opposite of what our goal should be. And I'm not dogging on teachers, i was a teacher myself for a long, long time. But until we can distinguish those roles, we are going to have a very difficult time making inroads for advocacy. So, okay, so enough lecturing, let's get on to what you really came for, which was the must haves list, and I certainly want to give you some of the highlights that we saw come through. But again, remember, you can download the entire list at schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash must haves. But in the meantime, let me dive into some of these and let's see what you think about them. Our most lively discussion was about this makes me laugh. It was about pens, p-e-n-s pens. I had to spell it for you, not sure you could understand me with my twang. What is the best pen for your office Man? this inspired some really emotional posts. People are very invested in their writing instruments, so, no surprise, flare pens came in at the top of the list. All the different colors. Everybody loves their flare pens. Second place and this really surprised me because this is not one I personally prefer Second place was Sharpie gel pens. People are going nuts over those. And third, my personal favorite pilot friction, the erasable pens Y'all. I could not get through my day without an erasable pen. And fourth place I'm gonna give you this one more because it really surprised me. I do kind of get it, i do feel it in my soul a little bit, but it still surprised me Old school ballpoint pen, your old big blue ballpoint pen, the ones that come in the box with the clear tube. Yeah, those were fourth place. I have a lot of other fancier writing instruments, so an interesting selection of writing utensils on that list for sure. And, like I said, there's a whole list with links there if you wanna go check out all the different ones that folks recommended. Another category that we presented was fidgets, and I know there's a really kind of some hot debates going on right now about fidgets in the school counseling world. Some people love them, some people hate them. I will say sometimes they do serve a purpose, again, if you're providing them intentionally right, and I see way too many people saying well, i have fidgets on my desk because it gives them something to do and they can talk to me a little bit better. And while I do agree that fidgets can be a useful tool for that, be careful about relying on them for facilitating your conversations. If a student is popping a poppet while they're talking to you, they only have half their mind on what they're telling you, and so you need to be able to figure out a way to wean them off of needing that to be able to communicate. But some interesting fidgets that made the list that I had not ever heard of one. A few people recommended something called stacking rocks, which looked pretty cool. There are these rock things that you can stack into these towers. It's really neat looking. You can get some that look realistic, some that are more brightly colored. I could really see a lot of students utilizing those across grade levels. Some other things that I had not heard of before were hand rollers Maybe getting one of those for myself in my office this year. So go check out hand rollers. A maze mat which kind of to me looks like a pot holder. It has a little maze sewn into it and there's a marble in there and you can move the marble through the maze. I thought that was an interesting one. And then we had our tried and true standbys, our bubble timers, our squishies, our marble mesh fidgets, which far and away were one of the most popular ones recommended. So if you don't have any marble mesh fidgets, you need to go get them now. And one that didn't make the most popular list, that I absolutely love. I'm just gonna go ahead and recommend them are called hedgehog rings. When I first held a hedgehog ring I thought I hate this. This is terrible, but the more I fiddle around with one, the more I came to love it. I put that one on your list as well, with the link Now go check out all those fidget ideas. Third category was books, now on your list. I divided books out into two separate lists one specifically for counselors and then books for using with students. Books for counselors had some very well known literature that we typically hear referred to in our circles of influence quite a bit, things like the boy who was raised as a dog. If you haven't read that one, you need to get a copy. What happened to you? Or the body keeps the score. Or Ross Green's lost at school, which is another one I highly recommend. Those are all great resources and great texts to read as a practicing counselor. And then there were a few recommended that I hadn't heard of, one of them being a newer book called Good Morning Monster, and it talks about people who have overcome mental health challenges through five different stories And it's told by therapists, so that one sounds pretty interesting. I'll tell you I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list. I'm on a plane ride this weekend. I cannot wait to dive into that one on the plane. It was recommended by many colleagues. And then there were some picture and activity books for students that were recommended as well, things like the Mindful Kids Collection from Usborne Books. I have those in my office and I use those from time to time. What do you do with the problem, which has some of the most beautiful illustrations I have ever seen in my life. What should Danny do? That's a fun book for the little ones. When I walk in with that book in my classroom lessons, kids absolutely lose their minds. They love it. Of course, the Invisible String was recommended. We talked about that one earlier, and there are lots of others that made the list. I'm trying to hurry a little bit because I know I've been in your ear a while, but I also wanna make sure that I have you set up for success. We also had a category for tech tools. Your usual suspects were in there Canva was there, smore was there, the Calm app was there, and then there were some others. I wasn't expecting Things like Texas EnCourse and Texas Career Check I knew of as a Texas counselor, but I was surprised they made the list with a group of nationwide counselors. So that was pretty cool. I love PDF. That's a great free site that I use myself. Love it. Cosmic Kids If you're working in an elementary school right now and you don't know about Cosmic Kids, you need to go figure out what's going on with that, because it is amazing. She does yoga stories with kids. She tells the story as she does the poses. She has the cutest accent ever. So make sure that you go check out Cosmic Kids if you don't know about that one. Books, which are animated books online. Lots and lots of resources there And remember these are all in that Must Haves list. Office supplies Some things you may want to have in your office. As far as your supplies Rolling metal carts You see them on sale at Michaels in the summer Places like that. I have my mini sand tray on the top of my metal cart and then I have tools and figurines and the shelves underneath. That works really well for me in my office. I can wheel that sand out of the way into a closet when it's going to be a distraction because it is a distraction for some students And then I can bring it out when the time is right. So I love my rolling metal cart. Erasable highlighters Game changer, let me tell you Erasable highlighters If you don't have any, go get them. They will totally transform the way you work. Rocket books made the list as well Under desk foot rests. Never even considered that, but as a school counselor who's only 5 foot 3, i think that's going to be something I'm investigating this year. And of course, your good old, reliable label maker and your coffee maker. And then we made a list of games And I will tell you that a lot of these games that are listed are not just for elementary age students. You know, a lot of times when you see folks talking about games, we're looking at elementary, maybe early middle school, but a lot of the games listed here would be appropriate on up into high school. Things like the un-game, which was designed to be used in therapy, would be a great addition to your counseling office. Totem Again a great game for all age levels. Suspend is another fun one. It's marketed toward little ones, but I'm telling you that everybody has fun with that one. Buildz Same idea A mini basketball hoop. Who doesn't love that? Play a little basketball? I get tired of playing trash with my students, so I upgraded to basketball hoop. That's been a good upgrade for me. There's a game called Mad Dragon. You don't have that game in your counseling office. You need to get that now. It's played like UNO and it focuses on anger management techniques, emotion identification, coping strategies all the components that go into anger management, and it's pretty fun. So Mad Dragon is definitely one on the list that I use and know and love. And again, you can find all of these listed in the must haves list. All you gotta do is go grab it off our website, schoolforschoolcounselorscom. slash must haves, go get your copy, and we got a few goodies that we're gonna throw in for you as well, just to sweeten the deal a little bit. So hope you enjoy those tons and I hope you enjoyed the must haves list. I can tell you we had a lot of fun sharing everybody's responses coming in, kind of discussing some of the things that surprised us or new things that we learned about, and then reliving it all again, compiling it into a list in order to try to make the beginning of your school year feel a little bit more smooth, a little more streamlined and like you know what you want to do. So remember, just curate that collection. You don't have to get everything that's on the list. You can start as a minimalist and you can build your collection as you go, as you determine what you like to use and which tools do the best job for your personal counseling style. Alright, i'll be back soon with another episode of the school for school counselors podcast. It's gonna be coming up very quick, so stay tuned with me and in the meantime, i hope that you have the best start to summer. I hope that you have all of the fun and joy and relaxation that you deserve, because you came out of a pretty tough school year, so grateful for the work that you did throughout the fall and spring semesters, guiding students toward their best outcomes, no doubt putting up with a little bit of baloney along the way, but you handled it with grace. You did your best job for students and, at the end of the day, that's all that matters. They were so lucky to have you serving them on campus and I'm just grateful to know you. So go check out that must haves list. Let me know what you decided to grab for your own office. I would really be interested to hear about that. You can let us know on our Facebook group school for school counselors Facebook group. I'd love to chat with you. Alright, i'll see you again soon. Until we meet again, i hope you have the best day and best start to summer. Take care.