Feb. 2, 2026

School Counseling Has Two Futures- and We’re Running Out of Time

You hold a master’s degree. You studied crisis intervention, psychopathology, and therapeutic technique. So why is your profession still fighting to be seen as essential? It doesn’t have to stay this way- but the window is closing. In this episode, I lay out two possible futures for school counseling: one that ends in irrelevance, and one where we finally become the campus influence we were meant to be. What’s pushing us toward the wrong path isn’t what most counselors think. And fixing it wi...

You hold a master’s degree. You studied crisis intervention, psychopathology, and therapeutic technique.
So why is your profession still fighting to be seen as essential?

It doesn’t have to stay this way- but the window is closing.

In this episode, I lay out two possible futures for school counseling: one that ends in irrelevance, and one where we finally become the campus influence we were meant to be.

What’s pushing us toward the wrong path isn’t what most counselors think.
And fixing it will require a shift few are talking about.

Stop being helpful. Start being undeniable.

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Join our new Skool for School Counselors community

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Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us!

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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

This work is part of the School for School Counselors body of work developed by Steph Johnson, LPC, CSC, which centers role authority over role drift, consultative practice over fix-it culture, adult-designed systems and environments as primary drivers of student behavior, clinical judgment over compliance, and school counselor identity as leadership within complex systems.

00:00 - NSCW Reality Check

02:34 - Two Futures For The Profession

04:41 - The Data: Ratios And Unmet Need

07:06 - ESSER Cliff And Rising Demand

08:12 - Path One: The Slow Fade

10:36 - Echo-Chamber Advocacy Problems

12:18 - Deprofessionalization By Printables

15:20 - Short Term Doesn’t Mean Shallow

17:35 - Billing Infrastructure And Missed Voice

19:10 - Path Two: Evidence And Audience

21:11 - Build Data Practices That Matter

23:06 - Legislative Strategy And Clinical Identity

26:16 - Practical Filters For Interventions

28:06 - When The Role Is Redefined As SEL

30:31 - Licensure, Billing, And Staying Essential

33:16 - Why Clinical Consultation Changes Everything

36:16 - From Collaboration To Clinical Fluency

39:16 - Avoid Faux Consultation; Seek The Real Thing

41:29 - Build Clout And Become A Strategic Partner

WEBVTT

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This week, National School Counseling Week, thousands of school counselors across the country are going to be celebrated.

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Some of you will get donuts in the lounge, a shout-out in the morning announcements, maybe even a nice email or card from your principal.

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And some of you will get nothing.

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No acknowledgement, no recognition.

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You'll scroll social media and see other counselors posting their gift baskets and appreciation lunches, and you'll spend the rest of the week wondering if anyone on your campus even knows what you do.

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Now, I know some listeners are already thinking, well, it's not really an appreciation week, it's an advocacy week.

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And technically, yes.

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National School Counseling Week was designed to shine a spotlight on the profession, not to receive thank you cards.

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But here's the thing: that distinction doesn't make the sting go away.

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You can know intellectually that the week is about advocacy and still feel the gut punch of being invisible when everyone else is posting their celebration picks.

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Both things can be true.

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And pretending the hurt isn't real doesn't make it go away.

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It just makes you feel like you're not allowed to talk about it.

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So if that's you, I want you to know I see you, and I still need you to keep listening.

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Because here's the harder truth.

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Even the school counselors who do get celebrated this week, by Friday, most of them will go right back to being invisible.

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Right back to being the person who does a little bit of everything, but owns nothing.

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Right back to being first on the list for lunch duty and last on the list for professional respect.

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This probably isn't what you expected me to say this week, and I promise I am not here to be a killjoy during National School Counseling Week.

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I'm here because I believe in this profession with everything that I have.

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But loving something means telling the truth and being honest about where it's headed.

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Welcome back, school counselor.

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This week I'm laying out two possible futures for our profession.

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One ends with school counseling fading into irrelevance within the next decade, and the other, it's the path where we finally become the essential respected clinicians we were trained to be.

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The data is clear, the stakes are real, and the choice is yours.

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So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work and maybe a little bit of rebellion, you are in the right place.

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I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast.

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Today we're going to look at two possible futures for school counseling, not hypothetical, abstract futures.

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These are concrete paths based on what's happening right now in the data, in the policy landscape, and in the day-to-day reality of your campuses.

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Path one is the trajectory we're on if nothing changes.

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And I'm going to be very real with you.

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That path ends with our profession fading into irrelevance within the next decade.

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Path two is the one we build intentionally.

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It's going to require a fundamental shift in how we think about our work, our expertise, and our voices.

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But it's the path that not only saves school counseling, it elevates it to the essential, respected profession that it was always meant to be.

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This episode will not be a motivational speech.

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This is a strategic assessment.

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Think of it as our profession's annual performance review from someone who is immersed in the realities of school counseling on real-world campuses and is watching these patterns unfold in real time.

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So, first, let's talk about where we stand right now.

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And I'm gonna paint this picture with data because if we're gonna have this conversation, we have to start with reality.

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The national student to counselor ratio is 376 to 1 as of 2023-24.

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Ask a recommends 250 to 1.

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Only three states, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Vermont, actually meet that 250 to 1 benchmark.

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And here's where it gets worse.

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At the elementary level, ratios are often above 600 to 1.

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And in some states, like Indiana, it's 694 to 1.

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To top that off, 8 million students in this country don't have access to any school counselor at all.

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And an even worse never than that, which should haunt all of us, 1.7 million students attend a school that has a police officer on campus, but no school counselor.

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Let that one sink in a minute.

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So when we talk about the youth mental health crisis in schools, we're not throwing around buzzwords.

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This is a legit national crisis.

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Nearly one in five adolescents experience a major depressive episode in a given year.

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For girls, it's one in four.

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45% of young people ages 10 to 24 report struggling with their mental health in the past two years.

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And the most devastating statistic: 70 to 80% of children and teens with mental health disorders never receive professional help.

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So demand and need for school-based mental health support is skyrocketing.

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More than half of all public schools report raising demand, and fewer than half say that they're actually effective in meeting that demand.

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The need for mental health supports in schools has never been greater.

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So the question that I keep coming back to is who's gonna meet it?

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Now, over the past few years, schools received nearly$190 billion in federal pandemic relief funds called ESSER.

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And a huge portion of that, about 77% of districts that received it, used that money to increase mental health professional staffing.

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Almost half of those districts specifically added school counselors.

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Many of our listeners were hired with ESSER funds.

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But that money is now gone.

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Districts had to obligate ESSER funds by September 30th, and they had to spend them down almost immediately afterward.

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And 83% of districts anticipate that students will continue to have greater mental health needs, even though we no longer have the funding to support them.

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So here we are.

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We have unprecedented demand, expiring funding, and a profession, school counseling, at a crossroads.

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But that's just setting the stage.

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Now we've got to talk about the two paths available to us and the direction that each one leads.

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So we're gonna call path one the slow fade.

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This is where we are now.

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And we'll start with advocacy because this is the biggest misfire in our profession right now.

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The school counseling world has spent decades talking to itself.

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We write position statements that no other industry reads.

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We create infographics for National School Counseling Week that get shared in our own Facebook groups.

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We host galas and give awards at conferences attended entirely by other school counselors.

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Here's my question, and I'm asking it genuinely.

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When was the last time ASCA launched a sustained advocacy campaign directed at school administrators, or at superintendents, at state legislators, at the people who actually control budgets, staffing, and job descriptions?

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I bet you've never seen it because I have never seen it either.

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And here's what makes this even more frustrating: the advocacy that does happen is largely falling on the shoulders of individual school counselors.

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You sticking your neck out in your building, speaking up in staff meetings, pushing back on inappropriate duties while worrying that you're also jeopardizing your job.

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That's not sustainable.

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Ask is asking the people with the least institutional power, you, to carry the heaviest advocacy load.

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And then we're all wondering why nothing changes at scale.

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We talk about advocacy as a pillar of the ASCA national model, but our advocacy efforts are almost entirely inward-facing.

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Y'all, we are shouting into our own echo chamber.

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Administrators don't read our position statements.

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Legislators don't attend our conferences.

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And the people who actually decide whether your campus gets another counselor or another resource officer are not hearing from us in the language that they understand.

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And as if it couldn't get any worse, it does, because when we advocate as an industry, we tend to lean on just because we say so arguments instead of empirically validated data.

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We need to show up with outcome data, cost-benefit analyses, and ROI language that decision makers respond to, not pamphlets about what school counselors wish they could do.

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This is heavy, right?

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But then there's another problem in path one.

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And I get a lot of hate mail for this, more than you probably realize, but I'm sticking to my guns here because I really do believe this.

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One of the things that school counselors have crafted as their own biggest obstacle are materials on platforms like teachers pay teachers.

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There are ads right now, today, and I know because I saw many this morning, marketing school counseling materials as quote, classroom supports that anyone can use.

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SEL worksheets, coping skills, coloring pages, feelings, check-ins, all designed to be purchased and implemented by anyone.

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No training, no clinical judgment, no understanding of the students sitting in front of you.

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A Fordham Institute review rated many of the most popular lesson plans on teachers pay teachers as mediocre or probably not worth using.

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30% of top lessons were found to pose potential harm to students.

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This is big, but that's not even the worst part.

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The real danger is that every time a school counselor walks into a classroom with a downloaded worksheet and acute activity, they are reinforcing the message that what we do does not require specialized training.

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You spent years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars earning a graduate degree.

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Do you really want to walk into a school and essentially communicate?

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I do exactly what you do, only I talk about feelings instead of decimals.

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If a teacher can do what you do with a$4 printable from the internet, then why does the campus need you?

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Ouch.

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But I'm gonna warn you that is the question that administrators and their higher-ups are already asking.

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And our reliance on these types of materials is handing them the answer.

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And what gets me even more, we have the research showing these types of resources aren't helpful and in some cases can be genuinely harmful.

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The data is on our side with that.

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But the other side, the people selling these printables by the thousands, they have zero evidence that any of it actually works.

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Not a single outcome study, not one data point showing student improvement, not even action research.

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They are selling based on aesthetic appeal and convenience, not efficacy.

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So if we are going to stand up and claim to be evidence-based and data-driven, and we should, then by ding dang, we need to follow through with that.

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We cannot say that we are a research-informed profession while simultaneously filling our student visits with materials that have no research behind them.

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That's not just inconsistent.

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Y'all, that is indefensible.

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And look, really, this isn't even about the printables.

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It's about what they signal to decision makers about who we are.

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Every time we lean on materials that require almost no expertise, we are writing our own job description, and it is not the one we want.

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Y'all are getting me fired up.

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All right, no, we've got another problem though here.

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And I hope I'm not beating you down, but y'all, I'm just trying to be real and I promise I'm gonna have some solutions.

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Okay.

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This is not all gloom and doom.

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This next one is gonna push some buttons again, and I'm okay with that.

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Our profession has adopted short-term counseling as a defining framework.

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But somewhere along the way, short-term became a permission slip for surface level.

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Short term does not have to mean shallow.

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Brief, focused intervention can be powerful when it's grounded in clinical skill, theoretical framework, and genuine assessment of what's happening with a student.

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But too often what I see is quote, short term being used to justify three sessions of worksheets and a feelings chart, then moving on because that's outside my scope.

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We have been trained as clinicians.

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We hold master's degrees.

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Many of us hold license.

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And yet we've allowed this profession to drift toward interventions that require almost no clinical judgment at all.

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That drift is what makes us replaceable.

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And here's something we don't say often enough.

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Many of us have more master's level and postmaster's training than the administrator supervising us.

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But we are still letting them define us as worksheet people.

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At some point, we have to own the expertise we actually have and stop accepting a diminished version of what we're qualified to do.

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So, with all of this being considered, the advocacy that talks to itself, the deprofessionalization with cute fonts, and short-term counseling leading to very shallow interventions, let's follow the trajectory to its logical conclusion.

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Districts are already navigating Medicaid billing conversations.

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Do you know this?

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As of January 2024, mental health counselors and marriage and family therapists can now bill Medicare directly.

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School-based health centers have nearly doubled from about 2,600 in 2016 to nearly 4,000 now.

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The infrastructure for billable campus-based mental health providers is being built as we speak.

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And the part no one in our world is talking about is the massive missed opportunity.

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As school counselors, we know how schools work.

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We understand the systems, the schedules, the culture, and the constraints.

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An outside therapist walking into a school building doesn't necessarily know how to navigate an IEP meeting or a master schedule or a district crisis protocol or a conversation with a parent in the drop-off line.

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We do.

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That's an enormously powerful position, and we're completely failing to build a voice around it.

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Right now, those billing conversations are happening without us.

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Outside providers are building the case for why they belong in schools.

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And whether or not you can bill yourself, school counselors should be making the case that no one understands the school ecosystem better than we do.

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We should be essential partners in any mental health model a district builds, not the afterthoughts.

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But that argument does not land if we've spent the last decade proving that we're interchangeable with the teachers pay teachers download.

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If we continue down path one with no meaningful advocacy, deprofessionalized tools, surface-level interventions, then when a superintendent sits down to decide who is going to fill the mental health roles on campuses, they're going to choose providers who can generate revenue over the ones who distribute worksheets.

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And we won't be able to argue because we have never built the case for why our expertise is irreplaceable.

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Within 10 years, the school counseling role as we know it fades away.

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It won't be dramatic, it won't be a big explosion.

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But one by one, our budget lines are going to be redirected and we will no longer have a place working with students.

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That's path one.

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Okay, so then let's talk about path two.

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Path two starts with the fundamental reorientation of who we're talking to.

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Our advocacy has to move beyond the echo chamber and get in front of the people who hold the levers of power, the legislators, the superintendents, the school board members, and the building administrators.

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This means showing up at school board meetings with outcome data, not sentiment.

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It means framing our value in language that resonates with budget decisions, like retention, graduation rates, reduced disciplinary incidents, college enrollment, FAFSA completion rates.

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Not we support the whole child.

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Y'all, that doesn't mean anything to a superintendent who is staring at a budget shortfall.

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And I want to give credit here where credit is due because many state school counseling associations are turning themselves inside out to try to make a dent here.

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They are showing up at state legislatures, building relationships with education committees and fighting for racial legislation.

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But most of them are doing it with shoestring budgets and volunteer labor.

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They need our help.

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They need our membership, our voices, and our data.

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The difference between state-level advocacy and what we see nationally is often the difference between people who understand the urgency and the people who are still writing position papers.

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Get involved with your state organization, y'all.

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They are doing the real work.

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Next, we have to stop advocating with feelings and start advocating with evidence.

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Every claim that we make about our impact needs a citation, a study, or a data point.

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Because the people making decisions about our positions respond to evidence, but we've been busy giving them slogans.

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At every level, building, district, state, national, our advocacy needs to be empirically grounded.

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We need to be the profession that shows its work, not the one that asks to be taken on faith.

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This is exactly why we maintain such a heavy focus on school counseling data practices inside my mastermind.

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Because data isn't something that you just collect for a report, or let me be real, a couple weeks a year for a ramp distinction.

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It's the foundation of every argument you'll ever make for your position.

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At the start of the school year, only 30 30% of school counselors in my data cohort were consistently tracking their outcomes.

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And only 20% said they felt good about their data practices.

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After one semester of focused work together, 90% of the cohort is consistently tracking data, and 100% feel more optimistic about their data practices.

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And we still have an entire semester to go.

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That shift didn't happen because I handed them a spreadsheet template.

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It happened because we engaged in structured consultation and accountability inside a community that made data feel doable instead of overwhelming.

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That's the kind of infrastructure that Path 2 requires.

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Now, on to legislative engagement.

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Some states are already doing this pretty well.

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Indiana is fighting for legislation requiring counselors to spend at least 60% of their time on actual counseling.

00:23:10.039 --> 00:23:16.679
Texas has an 80-20 policy, but these efforts are piecemeal and they're reactive.

00:23:17.240 --> 00:23:32.679
What we really need is coordinated, proactive legislative strategy in every state, led by a focused and intentional national organization with real strategy, not just position papers.

00:23:33.079 --> 00:23:42.839
An organization that puts resources behind getting our data in front of the people writing education policy, not just the people reading the newsletters.

00:23:43.959 --> 00:23:49.559
And then in path two, it's time to reclaim our clinical identity.

00:23:50.119 --> 00:23:58.839
We need to stop behaving like activity coordinators and start operating as the clinical professionals that we were trained to be.

00:23:59.159 --> 00:24:02.679
Again, you hold a master's degree.

00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:10.199
You studied human development, psychopathology, assessment, group dynamics, crisis intervention, and therapeutic techniques.

00:24:10.519 --> 00:24:12.839
You are not a worksheet dispenser.

00:24:13.079 --> 00:24:19.079
You are a clinician embedded in a school system, and that positioning is powerful if you lean into it.

00:24:19.319 --> 00:24:27.399
But this means being willing to evaluate the tools and materials that we use with the same rigor we'd expect from any clinical setting.

00:24:27.639 --> 00:24:31.720
It means asking, is this intervention grounded in evidence?

00:24:31.959 --> 00:24:35.319
Does it require clinical judgment to implement effectively?

00:24:35.559 --> 00:24:40.359
Or could literally anyone with internet access do what I'm about to do?

00:24:41.480 --> 00:24:46.759
So here's a practical filter that I want you to start using right away.

00:24:47.159 --> 00:24:53.159
Before you use any material in your school counseling work, ask yourself and be honest.

00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:55.959
Could a parent volunteer do this?

00:24:56.359 --> 00:24:58.039
Could a paraprofessional?

00:24:58.439 --> 00:25:02.919
Could a teacher with no counseling training provide this?

00:25:03.240 --> 00:25:09.000
If the answer is yes, that activity is not demonstrating your expertise.

00:25:09.319 --> 00:25:18.919
It may still have value as one small piece of a larger intervention, but it can't be the centerpiece of what you do day in and day out.

00:25:19.480 --> 00:25:22.599
Differentiate yourself from staff.

00:25:23.079 --> 00:25:29.720
Make the unique value of your clinical training visible and undeniable on your campus.

00:25:30.759 --> 00:25:39.720
Now, I want to acknowledge something here, because I know this is a hard shift for a lot of you, and it's scary because printables feel safe.

00:25:39.959 --> 00:25:49.720
And when you've built your entire workflow around activities and worksheets and structured lessons, being told to step into clinical territory can feel overwhelming.

00:25:49.959 --> 00:25:52.679
I get that, and I'm not dismissing it.

00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:57.240
And I also want to name something that doesn't get talked about enough.

00:25:57.480 --> 00:25:59.799
Some of you aren't choosing printables.

00:26:00.199 --> 00:26:02.599
You've been told that's your job.

00:26:03.159 --> 00:26:10.039
You may have been hired under the title of school counselor, but what you were really hired to be was an SEL teacher.

00:26:10.199 --> 00:26:18.759
You push into classrooms, you run guidance lessons, and when you try to do actual counseling, you're told that's not what your role is on campus.

00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:20.279
I hear you.

00:26:21.159 --> 00:26:22.359
It's frustrating.

00:26:22.519 --> 00:26:28.519
That is a systemic problem and it is not your fault, but it is your fight.

00:26:29.079 --> 00:26:34.839
Because if we accept that redefinition of our role, we're handing over the profession.

00:26:35.319 --> 00:26:46.199
The answer is not to quietly comply, it's to build the case with data and advocacy for why that model is failing students.

00:26:46.519 --> 00:26:48.919
And here's what I need you to hear.

00:26:49.319 --> 00:26:56.119
Those who do not commit to redefining their work in this way are not just risking their own careers.

00:26:56.439 --> 00:26:59.799
They're putting all of their students at risk.

00:27:00.599 --> 00:27:05.639
Because when the profession gets replaced, and if we stay on path one, it will.

00:27:49.240 --> 00:27:50.439
Ouch, right?

00:27:51.399 --> 00:27:52.919
But it's true.

00:27:53.720 --> 00:28:03.159
If you're listening to this and you're realizing you really do want to make that shift, but you're not sure where to start, that's exactly what we work on in my mastermind.

00:28:03.639 --> 00:28:07.240
One hour of constructive consultation per week.

00:28:07.480 --> 00:28:08.279
That's it.

00:28:08.519 --> 00:28:11.639
It's not about adding any more to your plate than that.

00:28:11.879 --> 00:28:20.519
But by doing that, you will build the clinical confidence and the data practices that make you impossible to ignore.

00:28:20.679 --> 00:28:24.519
I'm going to drop the link to that in the show notes if you're interested.

00:28:25.639 --> 00:28:31.720
And now I need to talk about something that might kind of feel like a sharp turn, but stay with me because this is critical.

00:28:32.119 --> 00:28:36.519
Billing conversations are coming to every school district in America.

00:28:36.839 --> 00:28:40.759
Medicaid reimbursement for school-based services is expanding.

00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:43.399
More provider types can now bill.

00:28:43.639 --> 00:28:48.119
Districts are looking at this as a revenue stream, and they should.

00:28:48.519 --> 00:28:50.199
And let's be real, right?

00:28:50.519 --> 00:28:52.439
Economics is driving this.

00:28:52.679 --> 00:28:58.519
District budgets are shrinking, ESSER money is gone, and states are tightening their belts.

00:28:58.839 --> 00:29:04.439
Mental health billing is money on the table, and somebody is going to pick all that up.

00:29:04.759 --> 00:29:06.679
Now, I want to be clear about this.

00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:11.079
Most school counselors cannot bill insurance or Medicaid right now.

00:29:11.319 --> 00:29:21.159
Billing typically requires state licensure, LPC, LCSW, LMFT, some sort of credentials that go beyond our school counseling degrees.

00:29:21.399 --> 00:29:25.480
So if you're thinking, well, I'm not allowed to bill, you're right.

00:29:25.799 --> 00:29:30.359
And I'm not pretending that you could, but here's what I'm saying.

00:29:30.679 --> 00:29:32.599
This is a fork in the road.

00:29:32.759 --> 00:29:36.119
And we've got to decide what path we're on.

00:29:36.439 --> 00:29:46.359
If licensure is accessible to you, if you can pursue an LPC or the equivalent of that in your state, this is the moment to seriously consider it.

00:29:46.919 --> 00:29:57.480
Not because being able to bill should be your goal, but because being a licensed provider positions you to be at the table when these conversations happen.

00:29:57.799 --> 00:30:02.679
You become someone the district can't easily replace with an outside contractor.

00:30:03.319 --> 00:30:16.839
If licensure isn't in the cards for you, whether it's time, money, or just your life circumstances, your job right now is to become so clinically indispensable that you cannot be eclipsed.

00:30:17.079 --> 00:30:25.159
When the district brings in an outside therapist to handle billable services, you need to be the person they say they can't live without.

00:30:25.319 --> 00:30:34.279
The one who knows the building, the families, the systems, the one who coordinates, consults, and catches all the things that people don't say, but that you recognize.

00:30:34.679 --> 00:30:37.959
Either way, here's what you can't afford to do.

00:30:38.199 --> 00:30:42.039
You cannot afford to sit on the sidelines while these decisions get made.

00:30:42.359 --> 00:30:54.359
Because if school counselors are not in the room when districts decide who provides mental health services and who gets the resources to be able to do that, we will be written out of the story.

00:30:54.919 --> 00:31:01.720
We will be written out through budget lines that get redirected to someone who generates revenue.

00:31:21.399 --> 00:31:31.240
So let's talk about something that I believe is the single biggest gap in most school counselors' professional development, and that is clinical consultation.

00:31:31.720 --> 00:31:36.519
If you listen to this podcast, that should be no surprise to you whatsoever.

00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:40.679
You should be receiving consultation for yourself.

00:31:40.919 --> 00:31:47.399
Structured, ongoing, clinical consultation that builds your fluency as a practitioner.

00:31:47.639 --> 00:31:51.799
Think about how other clinical professions develop expertise.

00:31:52.039 --> 00:31:55.159
Therapists in private practice have supervisors.

00:31:55.319 --> 00:31:57.079
They have consultation groups.

00:31:57.319 --> 00:32:00.439
They have colleagues they call when they're stuck on a case.

00:32:00.759 --> 00:32:05.480
That infrastructure exists because clinical skills don't develop in isolation.

00:32:05.720 --> 00:32:11.559
They develop through dialogue, feedback, and guided reflection on real cases.

00:32:11.959 --> 00:32:15.000
School counselors are mostly flying solo.

00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:19.480
We close the door, we see students, and we figure it out on our own.

00:32:19.720 --> 00:32:24.359
Maybe we vent to a colleague at lunch, or worse, we post in a Facebook group.

00:32:24.599 --> 00:32:26.759
But that's not consultation.

00:32:27.079 --> 00:32:28.839
That's not building fluency.

00:32:28.919 --> 00:32:30.199
That's just surviving.

00:32:30.439 --> 00:32:36.119
And here's why that matters and why it's so critical to everything else that we've talked about today.

00:32:36.439 --> 00:32:40.759
You cannot demonstrate clinical expertise that you haven't built.

00:32:41.159 --> 00:32:47.720
You cannot show up as a consultant to teachers if you've never experienced what real consultation looks like.

00:32:48.039 --> 00:32:54.039
You can't move beyond printables if you don't have the clinical confidence to know what to do instead.

00:32:54.359 --> 00:32:56.759
The fluency comes first.

00:32:57.159 --> 00:33:00.439
The campus presence comes after that.

00:33:01.319 --> 00:33:16.039
When you are regularly processing cases with someone who can push your thinking, who can ask the questions you didn't think to ask, who can name the patterns that you're not seeing, you start to internalize that voice.

00:33:16.279 --> 00:33:19.480
You start asking those questions to yourself.

00:33:19.720 --> 00:33:22.279
You start seeing students differently.

00:33:22.519 --> 00:33:28.759
And when a teacher comes up to you with a struggling kid, you're not reaching for a worksheet or a checklist.

00:33:28.919 --> 00:33:34.759
You're drawing on a clinical framework that you've developed through practice.

00:33:35.319 --> 00:33:38.599
That's what makes you irreplaceable.

00:33:39.000 --> 00:33:42.199
Not your title, not your credentials.

00:33:42.359 --> 00:33:44.919
It's the depth of your clinical thinking.

00:33:45.159 --> 00:33:50.439
And that only comes through when you're engaged in ongoing consultation.

00:33:51.240 --> 00:33:54.599
Let me show you what that kind of fluency enables.

00:33:54.839 --> 00:33:59.000
Let's say a teacher tells you about a student that's acting out in class.

00:33:59.240 --> 00:34:06.439
You and the teacher brainstorm together, and maybe you come up with a behavior chart, more frequent check-ins, something like that.

00:34:06.519 --> 00:34:07.399
That's collaboration.

00:34:07.480 --> 00:34:08.280
It's fine.

00:34:08.519 --> 00:34:12.599
But with clinical fluency, the same conversation goes differently.

00:34:12.920 --> 00:34:17.240
You ask targeted questions about where the behavior escalates.

00:34:17.480 --> 00:34:19.800
You start to recognize a pattern.

00:34:19.960 --> 00:34:22.920
This isn't defiance, it's displaced grief.

00:34:23.240 --> 00:34:27.800
The student's grandmother died six weeks ago and no one's connected the dots yet.

00:34:28.120 --> 00:34:32.680
You help the teacher understand what's actually happening developmentally.

00:34:32.920 --> 00:34:41.160
You explain the process of grief and you recommend trauma-informed responses that they would have never even thought to try.

00:34:41.559 --> 00:34:48.200
The teacher walks out of that conversation with an insight they couldn't have gotten from anyone else in that building.

00:34:48.360 --> 00:34:52.760
And that's not because you sat down and read a book or attended a webinar.

00:34:53.000 --> 00:35:00.360
It's because you were doing the deeper work to sharpen your clinical lens through structured consultation.

00:35:01.079 --> 00:35:02.680
That's the difference.

00:35:03.079 --> 00:35:08.440
And it's the difference between following path one or path two.

00:35:08.920 --> 00:35:18.440
And a caveat here: there are going to be people online who are going to try to sell you consultation that's really just collaboration with a fancier name.

00:35:18.840 --> 00:35:30.920
Going to hold these co-planning meetings and brainstorming sessions and very basic mental health information attached to the backside of whatever worksheet they're throwing at you.

00:35:31.160 --> 00:35:33.240
That's not what I'm talking about.

00:35:33.559 --> 00:35:45.240
What I provide is a true clinical consultation model designed specifically for the school counseling context, one that builds your fluency week by week, case by case.

00:35:45.400 --> 00:35:48.200
And again, it's the backbone of what we do in the mastermind.

00:35:48.280 --> 00:35:56.519
And it's why our members rarely download resources, but they are becoming exponentially different practitioners.

00:35:56.840 --> 00:36:03.400
So if you don't have access to that kind of structured consultation right now, try to start somewhere.

00:36:03.559 --> 00:36:07.000
Find a colleague that will go deeper than just venting.

00:36:07.240 --> 00:36:12.760
Join a supervision group or seek out a mentor who will challenge your thinking, not just validate it.

00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:18.840
The point is stop trying to build clinical expertise in isolation.

00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:21.559
Y'all, it does not work that way.

00:36:22.519 --> 00:36:27.000
And then last, we need to talk about building clout on campus.

00:36:27.480 --> 00:36:39.880
In path two, school counselors, stop being the people who do a little bit of everything, or as we often hear, serve as the junk drawer of the school, and start being recognized authorities on campus.

00:36:40.440 --> 00:37:00.760
This means proactively communicating your expertise, leading professional development for teachers on topics that only you are qualified to address, being the person that administrators call first when there's a student in crisis, not because it's your default job, but because your clinical judgment is trusted.

00:37:01.079 --> 00:37:11.880
It means building relationships with administrators where you're treated as a strategic partner, not as an adjunct placeholder who fills schedule gaps and covers lunch duty.

00:37:12.680 --> 00:37:18.200
So here's where we are: two paths.

00:37:19.160 --> 00:37:26.280
And I want to be clear, I don't think this is something that gets decided in school boardrooms or at national conferences.

00:37:26.519 --> 00:37:32.600
Although, as we've talked about today, that kind of coordinated leadership is desperately needed.

00:37:33.079 --> 00:37:37.320
But y'all, we've been waiting for that cavalry to write up for a long time now.

00:37:37.720 --> 00:37:44.680
And to be real, we've been shown that ultimately, at the end of the day, it's gonna be left up to us.

00:37:45.320 --> 00:37:57.000
This decision is going to get made on your campus, in your office, in the choices that you make every single day about how you show up in your building.

00:37:57.480 --> 00:38:03.400
Every time you choose a printable over a clinical intervention, you're voting for path one.

00:38:04.039 --> 00:38:11.240
Every time you accept non-counseling duties without somehow eventually pushing back, you're voting for path one.

00:38:11.880 --> 00:38:20.360
Every time you advocate to other counselors instead of to the administrators and legislators that actually hold the power, you're voting for path one.

00:38:21.400 --> 00:38:29.720
But every time you demonstrate clinical expertise that nobody in your building can replicate, you're building path two.

00:38:30.280 --> 00:38:34.680
Every time you show up with data, you're building path too.

00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:45.480
And every time you consult with the teacher using your specialized knowledge and they walk away with something they couldn't have gotten anywhere else, you're building path to.

00:39:23.559 --> 00:39:25.400
Be honest with yourself.

00:39:25.800 --> 00:39:33.000
Because that moment, that reach for the worksheet when you're out of your depth, that's path one.

00:39:33.640 --> 00:39:40.360
That's the gap we've let form between what our students need and what we've trained ourselves to provide.

00:39:40.519 --> 00:39:44.200
And it's the gap that path two closes.

00:39:45.400 --> 00:39:57.000
Somewhere in your building, right now, there is a kid that has been holding it together all semester, showing up, getting by, fooling everyone.

00:39:57.720 --> 00:40:04.840
And one day this spring, they're gonna sit down in your office and finally crack.

00:40:06.039 --> 00:40:08.760
That is not a worksheet moment.

00:40:09.880 --> 00:40:12.840
That's why you got your degree.

00:40:13.960 --> 00:40:23.240
And in that moment, they're gonna need someone who spent this year sharpening their skills, not reaching for another printable.

00:40:23.960 --> 00:40:27.640
The question is whether you've been becoming that person.

00:40:28.600 --> 00:40:30.680
That's what's at stake.

00:40:31.160 --> 00:40:36.120
Not just your career, their outcome.

00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:46.200
Ten years from now, when you look back on this moment in our profession's history, which side do you want to have been on?

00:40:46.680 --> 00:40:57.480
The counselors who saw what was coming and built something better, or the ones who kept their heads down, passed out the worksheets, and hoped someone else would show up to fight the fight for them.

00:40:58.280 --> 00:41:00.680
So here's what I want you to remember.

00:41:01.079 --> 00:41:05.800
Stop being helpful, start being undeniable.

00:41:07.800 --> 00:41:10.200
So this is National School Counseling Week.

00:41:10.280 --> 00:41:12.039
Yes, celebrate, you've earned it.

00:41:12.280 --> 00:41:15.880
Your work is hard and it definitely matters.

00:41:16.360 --> 00:41:24.519
But let this also be the week that you stop celebrating what you wish school counseling was and start building what it needs to become.

00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:39.079
The theme is amplify student success, and I'll add to that: amplify our professional voice, amplify our clinical expertise, amplify our advocacy to the people who can actually create change.

00:41:39.559 --> 00:41:45.640
Because the best way to celebrate a profession is to fight for its future.

00:41:46.840 --> 00:42:01.400
Hey, if this episode resonated with you, if it challenged you, if it lit a fire in your soul, and it made you rethink how you're gonna show up on campus, I want to invite you into a space where path two is actively practiced, not just discussed.

00:42:01.559 --> 00:42:05.720
And believe it or not, I'm not going to try to convince you to join the mastermind.

00:42:06.039 --> 00:42:13.160
We have built a free community over on school, S-K-O-O-L, where school counselors are doing the real work.

00:42:13.559 --> 00:42:22.519
We are going to be talking data, sharpening clinical skills, and having the kinds of professional conversations that you don't find in typical Facebook groups.

00:42:22.760 --> 00:42:27.000
No complaining without solutions, no surface level cheerleading.

00:42:27.160 --> 00:42:31.480
There's going to be honest dialogue about how to become undeniable.

00:42:31.800 --> 00:42:37.240
And this week, that new community, even though it's small, is especially alive.

00:42:37.400 --> 00:42:46.680
We're going to have National School Counseling Week celebrations, contests, prizes, and there's already some of the best back and forth I've seen from school counselors anywhere online.

00:42:47.160 --> 00:42:53.320
Y'all has the energy of the good old days, the Facebook groups, if you remember that, before they all got overrun.

00:42:53.480 --> 00:42:55.880
So I would love for you to come be a part of that.

00:42:55.960 --> 00:42:57.720
I'll drop the link in the show notes.

00:42:58.120 --> 00:43:02.120
Join it, come introduce yourself and tell us which path you'll be choosing.

00:43:02.280 --> 00:43:03.640
I'll see you in there.

00:43:04.039 --> 00:43:10.600
And hey, if you're one of the counselors that doesn't get recognized this week, I want you to remember something.

00:43:10.840 --> 00:43:15.000
The goal is not to be celebrated by people who don't understand what you do.

00:43:15.320 --> 00:43:21.960
The goal is to become so essential that they can't imagine the building without you.

00:43:22.280 --> 00:43:23.960
That's path two.

00:43:24.519 --> 00:43:26.360
And I will see you there.

00:43:26.600 --> 00:43:27.240
Take care.

School Counseling Has Two Futures- and We’re Running Out of Time

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