Prep NOW for a Stress-Less Spring Semester

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One of the things that bothers school counselors the most, in my opinion, is not feeling like they're prepared, whether that's in a larger, more global sense of not being prepared for school counseling from their grad school programs, or whether it's something more targeted like I wasn't prepared for my day, I wasn't prepared to have to handle that crisis.

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Not feeling prepared leaves us feeling at loose ends.

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It makes us question the decisions that we make in real time, and it's just not a good feeling.

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So in this episode, I want to take a very quick look at how we can get ourselves primed for the new semester, and I promise you this one's gonna be fast, because, as we head toward the end of December and our winter breaks, I know you don't have a lot of extra time on your hands, so let's make the most of it, shall we?

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Before we do, I wanna welcome you back to the School for School Counselors podcast.

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I'm Steph Johnson, your host, a full-time school counselor just like you, on a mission to make school counseling more sustainable and more enjoyable.

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Through our School for School Counselors community and things like this podcast, I want to bridge the gap between what grad school taught you and what's actually going on on your campus, because my goal is to make you feel competent, connected, inspired and empowered to make a difference, even if you're working in a super challenging school.

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Working in a super challenging school.

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So let's think about coming back from winter break.

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Oh, it can't come soon enough, can it?

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It's time.

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It's time for all of us to get a little space and distance from school, to be able to refresh our outlooks and reinvigorate ourselves.

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But think about coming back from that awesomeness to a messy desk, an email inbox that is overflowing, a calendar that doesn't yet quite contain everything it needs to.

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This is going to contribute, or perhaps perpetuate, the feelings of burnout and stress you might have been building throughout the fall semester.

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But if we're intentional in our efforts, if we can be very organized and really lay down the foundation for a productive return to school counseling, we're going to feel calm and prepared and feel more empowered in starting the new semester than like we're just jumping right back into the dumpster fire we just left right.

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So by the end of this episode, I want you to feel like you have a clear, actionable plan for wrapping up the fall semester cleanly and confidently.

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So let's talk about some quick things you can do to make that happen.

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Number one we've got to declutter Y'all.

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I've seen the pictures of some of your offices and I'm here to tell you it's not pretty.

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And that's not me throwing stones, because I am in the same boat.

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We start working, we start moving things around, we get flustered, we get busy and all of a sudden we have these little piles of papers or these little collections of things deposited all over our offices.

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And we know where things are.

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We can see them in our mind's eye, we know how to locate them, but they're not organized.

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They're not streamlined and, believe it or not, organized.

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They're not streamlined, and believe it or not.

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Research says that that is going to destroy your sense of clarity when you're moving quickly and you're making moment-by-moment decisions, or you're sitting in front of a student and you're doing the mental gymnastics that it takes to be able to facilitate a counseling session.

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You don't need those distractions.

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We need to make sure we have everything ready to go.

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So, looking through those piles of paper, maybe refreshing our supplies, getting them reorganized again, taking away materials that are maybe misused, worn out or that we just don't need anymore we can file them away somewhere else, put them in a closet, not worry about them, but let's get our space clean and streamlined.

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Let's also get all of those documents filed away.

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We want to make sure that we're able to put our hands on them and retrieve them quickly when the spring semester comes around, but we also don't want to leave for winter break with all that stuff laying around, right?

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So get them filed, put them in a binder if you are a binder person get them scanned and placed online.

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However it is that you handle your paperwork and documentation.

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Make sure you have that under control as well your paperwork and documentation.

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Make sure you have that under control as well.

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And then keep a small file folder with the few things that you're going to need for the start of the spring semester.

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Some of those things.

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If you're like me, it's out of sight, out of mind, and if I file them away but I know I'm going to need them at the start of the spring semester I'll forget about them and then all of a sudden, I'll realize I need them and I'll have sort of a little panic attack.

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Oh, my goodness, where did that go?

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I know I need to put my hands on that.

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I'd prefer to have it ready to go.

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So create that one file folder with the tasks that need your immediate attention once you return from winter break and have them ready to go.

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Digital organization also can serve to reduce your cognitive load.

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So what are your unused files?

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How many icons do you have on your desktop right now?

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Be honest, it's easy to throw things in there.

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How many things do you have in a random downloads folder?

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Go find that stuff and move it quickly to where it actually needs to live.

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You might look through your email inbox.

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Do you need to create some folders for different types of emails Student concerns, parent communications, student support team, those kinds of things and see if you can't hit zero inbox by the time you leave for winter break.

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Oh, I guarantee that inbox is going to fill up again while you're sleeping in and binging Netflix.

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But if you start from email inbox zero when you get back in January, it's not going to feel nearly as intimidating.

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So that's our first goal, right?

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Just organizing our physical spaces as well as our digital spaces.

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Next, we want to set up some systems so that we are all systems go upon our return.

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We were just talking about this first system in our School for School Counselors Mastermind session.

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We hold a data discussions session every single month where we talk about how we are utilizing and capturing school counseling program data, and one of the things we were talking about is re-evaluating our tracking tools.

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What are we using to capture the information we need to know about our program, and are those tools working for us?

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Are they getting the job done?

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Do they feel tedious?

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Do we avoid them because we don't like them, or are they knocking it out of the park?

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Really, really important to take a minute and think through those things.

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As I told my Mastermind members, we had several folks last year who faced some concerning changes in their roles at the end of the school year, and about half of them had been collecting data and had been very intentional with it and were able to advocate from a position of strength.

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And then others had not done such a great job with collecting any data and they were left just kind of standing there having to take whatever the campus and the district wanted to dish out, and I never want my colleagues and friends to be in that situation.

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I always want you to be prepared and feeling proactive.

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So if you don't have a tracking tool yet, find one.

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There are some inexpensive tracking tools out there for sure, and again, we talk about this in our mastermind every single month.

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So if you want some guidance and direction from folks who do what you do every single day, come join us schoolforschoolcounselorscom.

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Slash mastermind.

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But also remember that as you're trying to track student progress or track program data, simplicity wins the day.

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You don't have to track all the categories and all the subcategories and all the things that you might have seen in trackers elsewhere.

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Sometimes it's best to start simple and then, once you get those fundamentals under your belt, once you're feeling great about them and once you've developed habits regarding that tracking style, then you'll be ready to get a little bit more intentional and nuanced with your data collection.

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But there's no shame in starting in a simple manner, because anything that encourages you along that data journey is going to be a win.

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Secondly, look at your documentation processes.

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What are some of the things that you find yourself doing over and over again and you're kind of reinventing the wheel every time over again?

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And you're kind of reinventing the wheel every time.

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I used to have a release consent form that I would fill out for students every time I needed to request a release of information from an outside entity, and every single time I would print that form out, I would fill out all the information and then I would scan it back into my computer.

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One day I realized a lot of this information is repeated from request to request right Things like the campus name and the campus phone number, those kinds of things.

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I didn't have an electronic copy of that form to be able to just enter it in, so I created one, and now when I need one of those releases, I just pull up the file on my computer, type in the student name and birth date and I'm ready to go.

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So what are some templates that you can create for similar things?

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Behavior interventions, parent emails, student support initiatives those things all come to mind.

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Just take a few minutes and think through your documentation processes.

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Where are the blips and burps and how can you address them?

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And then, third, in your systems, look at your calendar.

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Go back and reverse engineer your spring semester in your calendar, whether that be a Google calendar, an Outlook calendar or maybe an old-fashioned paper planner like the one we provide for free through School for School Counselors.

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Set up your non-negotiable dates, set up reminders and timelines to the deadlines.

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Really reverse engineer that semester so that nothing comes up and surprises you when you're in the thick of behavior intervention and all the interpersonal concerns that seem to really kick off in the spring semester.

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You'll be prepared, you'll know what's coming next and you're not constantly playing catch up with yourself.

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All right, so we've set those systems up for success.

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We've organized our physical and our digital space, and now we need to do something that I think a lot of people overlook or think that that's really not important.

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I'll know when I need to do this.

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Do you have any guesses on what it might be?

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If you're thinking about setting up plans for self-care, you would be right.

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It seems so cliche, right In such a tired way, to talk about wellness in our work, but it's important.

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We need to walk through and list our non-negotiables for the spring semester.

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What are the things that we absolutely want to accomplish?

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What are our non-negotiables for ourselves?

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What are maybe some breaks we're going to schedule in for ourselves, some personal days we might like to take, or what are some boundaries that we'd like to install in the spring semester?

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This doesn't mean you have to completely overhaul your professional life.

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It doesn't mean that you have to create boundaries that are going to anger people around you, but it does mean that we need to be thoughtful and intentional about where those lines are going to be drawn in the spring semester.

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If there are some places that you could stand to become a little bit healthier, go ahead and just write it down.

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It doesn't mean it has to happen, but jot it down because again you don't want to come back from winter break, jump into everything full steam ahead and then months later realize, oh, I meant to do that, I meant to give that some thought or I meant to schedule that personal day.

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You'll have it all written down and ready to go, and this seems kind of funny too.

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But I think it's important to schedule some check-ins for ourselves.

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You could do that through a calendar reminder for journaling or reflection once a month or once a week in it at the end of each month to assess your wellness.

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Or you could invest in some professional consultation and support, like we run through our School for School Counselors Mastermind.

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A large part of what we do there is checking in with each other week to week to see how things are going, what things are weighing us down and how can we build better systems and create better outlooks for ourselves in our professional lives.

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So schedule those check-ins.

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Make sure you're not just trying to power through it alone all semester long, because this April, may and even June roll around you're going to start to feel the weight of all of these unaddressed needs.

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Last, after we've organized our physical and our digital spaces, we've set up some systems for success and we've created a plan to take care of ourselves.

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We need to create just a simple return plan, and I hesitate to even call it a plan because it's not even a plan.

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It's just a quick and dirty, bulleted list of the absolute essentials that we need to address once we return.

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Make it no more than four or five things, small things, right.

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Not overhaul my data collection system that would not be a small thing but select a few tasks that you know are going to be really pertinent once you return from winter break.

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One of mine will be grade reviews and failure report evaluations.

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I want to see where everybody's standing after the first semester, so that'll be one item of action on my return plan and then freshen up the resources that you know you use all the time Around.

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Here we call that our school counseling jump file, and it contains all of the essential resources that we know we use on the regular, things like suicide screeners and protocols, community resource information, things that you find yourself either needing to print out or hand out on the regular.

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We want to create a file with those things ready to go so that we don't have to spend any time trying to access them or print them out.

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They're already ready to rock.

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So, between our return plan sticky note and ourto-go resources, inside of that little folder we talked about, you should come back being able to pick up right where you left off, without feeling stress, without feeling overwhelmed and without feeling like, oh my goodness, how am I going to get through this spring semester?

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Organizing your spaces, setting up your systems, prioritizing your own well-being and creating a plan for your return are going to give you such a huge payoff come January.

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And it may feel right now, as we're in the thick of the holiday goings-on on our campuses and the end-of-semester requirements, that we don't have time to do any of these things, that there's absolutely no way we can get all of this done without staying late before the winter break arrives.

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But I'm here to tell you I really do think you could probably get all of these things done in 45 minutes or less.

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So take the challenge, see if you can do it.

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Make your list of the things you need to do Organizing your spaces, setting up your systems for return, scheduling your self-care and creating your return plan and then go post in our School for School Counselors Facebook group and let me know Were you able to do it in 45 minutes or am I just completely full of baloney?

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I want to know what you think.

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So go post in our Facebook group and let me know if this worked for you.

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All right, my friend, it is my ultimate goal, as always, to empower you and to help you feel competent in your work as well as connected to your fellow school counseling colleagues.

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And you have no greater ally in beginning the new semester than in the School for School Counselors Mastermind.

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I promise you I'm noticing lots of other little memberships and things.

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Folks who'd openly criticized me on the mastermind model and what we were seeking to accomplish in that are now trying to emulate it, and that's the nicest way I can think of to say copy it, because it's showing phenomenal impacts for school counselors.

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So go with the original.

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We've got this down.

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We enjoy weekly support and consultation with one another every Tuesday night at 8 pm Eastern, and we also hold some master classes and additional experiences, like the data discussions I just talked about on Sunday afternoons.

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We try to make it as convenient as possible for you with our timing, as well as our replays and our wonderful community, which we have moved off of social media.

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We are focusing on what needs focus and we're eliminating the distractions in our professional pursuits, and we would love for you to join us.

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You can find out more information at schoolforschoolcounselorscom.

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Slash mastermind.

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All right, my friend, I hope you have a great couple of weeks coming up.

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It's going to be wild, it's going to be busy, it's going to be crazy.

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Don't forget to take a few minutes to soak up the goodness and the joy in some of your students' hearts as you navigate through this season.

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Don't forget to sit and hold space for those who aren't so excited about the upcoming breaks, and then take that 45 minutes to set yourself up for success as you return from the holidays.

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I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast.

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In the meantime, I hope you have the best week.

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Take care, my friend.

Prep NOW for a Stress-Less Spring Semester

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