School Counselors' Secret Weapons for Special Pops Success

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What happens when you're asked to serve every student in your school, but without enough time and resources?

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When we're talking about special populations, things like special education, 504 students, gifted and talented, english language learners, etc.

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Etc.

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It feels like the list of school counselor responsibilities never ends.

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But here is the big question how do you meet the needs of every single one of these students without burning out or feeling overwhelmed?

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We're going to talk about it in this episode of the School for School Counselors podcast.

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Hey y'all, I'm Steph Johnson, host of the School for School Counselors podcast.

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Hey y'all, I'm Steph Johnson, host of the School for School Counselors podcast.

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So glad to be back with you this week.

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But before we jump into our topic, I wanted to share another one of the amazing reviews that we received from our recent pod party.

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Now, you don't have to wait for a pod party to submit a review.

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We love them, no matter the time of year, especially if they come with five shiny gold stars, and I'd love to share one with you today.

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This one is titled SC, and it did come with five shiny stars, and the review goes on to say this this show gives me hope and gives me a connection that I didn't think I would need coming in as a new school counselor.

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I'm so grateful you are doing this.

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All school counselors should feel connected in their roles and this is the place to come.

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Isn't that the sweetest review that came from JDRDZ Soto, and we appreciate your review more than you know.

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Thanks so much for taking your time to submit that.

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It means the world to us All right.

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So back to our topic.

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We are jumping into a big challenge that faces school counselors and as we start to shift our focus from well-being and professional identity.

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Last month this we're going to be talking about student special populations and we know we have a mandate right to serve all students on our campuses, regardless of their classifications.

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So we need to look today at some of the roadblocks and some of the specifics of each one of these pops and, most importantly, talk about ways that we can rise to the challenge.

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We're also going to talk about what to do if you're in a system that's underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed by expectations.

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Because you know and I know you're not the only one feeling that way.

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You know and I know you're not the only one feeling that way I will tell you this is one of my most highly evidence-based episodes that I think I've ever done 20 resources cited for this episode.

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At first count.

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There may be one or two more or less I counted really quickly but there is a ton of them here and I'm honestly hoping that they all fit in our show notes.

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So if you don't see them all listed, give us a shout.

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Hello at schoolforschoolcounselorscom.

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We'll be glad to connect you with the information that you're looking for, and I do want to mention also, before we get into this, that this information is offered with the caveat, and that is that this is not supposed to lead you into the land of burnout.

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As you're listening to some of these strategies, some of these intentionalities, I want you to gauge your resources, okay.

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Estimate your bandwidth to see if you have the ability to pursue some of these things, and if you don't, that's okay.

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Just like when we were talking a few episodes back about being a good enough school counselor, you need to know when the buck stops and if you have way too much on your plate, don't add more to it just because I'm offering some ideas about special populations.

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Keep them in mind, keep them in your back pocket and when you see the need on your campus or you have a little bit of space open up, then you'll know it's the right time to pursue those.

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All right, so let's start at the very basics here.

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We know we have an ethical responsibility to provide equitable services to all students in our school.

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That includes and I'm primarily going to be focusing on special education 504, bilingual and gifted and talented.

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Now we know we have other special student populations on our campuses, but I think this will give us the variety to be able to have a great discussion about this while still being able to get in-depth on it, if that makes sense.

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Okay, so our ASCA ethical standards remind us that we have to advocate for every student's access to a comprehensive school counseling program to support their academic, career and social-emotional development.

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So this includes our special education students and all the other populations that we've talked about.

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And our ethics also say that we must advocate for the equitable treatment of all students in all aspects of education.

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That means we have to be aware of our responsibilities for students.

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We have to not only ensure that they receive counseling services, but that they're being equitably treated anywhere they go on our school campuses.

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That's a tall order, isn't it?

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We're changing a lot of hearts and minds sometimes with this, and it makes me sad that that even has to happen, but that's just the way it is.

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Now, beyond our ethical responsibilities, we also have some legal responsibilities.

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There are federal laws at play here that we need to be aware of.

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One of them is IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and that comes into play with special education and IEPs or Individualized Education Programs.

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That's where we are planning appropriate interventions and modifications to meet students' needs.

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We also need to be aware of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

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Section 504 is where we collaborate to make sure that students with disabilities receive accommodations in the classroom.

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We need to know about FAPE Free, appropriate Public Educations through IDEA.

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We need to be aware of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which not only prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin, but also ensures that students with limited English proficiency have equal access to educational programs.

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So we have a role in addressing language access for bilingual students.

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And then, as far as our gifted and talented students, you likely have state guidelines as well to ensure that gifted and talented students receive services that appropriately challenge them while also addressing their social and emotional development.

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So we've got a lot going on already right here, don't we?

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And then, on top of all that, the ASCA national model calls on us to be advocates for equity so that all students can benefit from their educational opportunities.

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That means we need to be part of data-driven decision-making to help find those achievement gaps and figure out what to do to close them on our campuses.

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So we have ethical responsibilities, we have legal responsibilities and we also, in my opinion, have a moral responsibility to provide equitable services to all students, including those in special populations.

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Now, in doing this, we have some challenges.

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For sure.

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There are four big ones that we have.

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One is time constraints.

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When we're serving all students, when we're serving all students, we have these ungodly school counselor to student ratios.

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It often feels like we don't have enough time to look at our special pops right.

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With an average caseload of 464 students to one school counselor, according to ASCA, it makes it difficult to feel like we can really get in there and provide the individualized attention that these students with specific needs require.

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It just feels overwhelming and like how in the world am I going to get to all that right?

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When you add in all of the non-counseling duties that we do, all of the administrative tasks, clerical responsibilities, scheduling, testing, coordination the list goes on and on.

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Then we further feel like we do not have time to really get intentional with our special populations.

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The second big barrier we have and we've kind of talked about it already are these large caseloads, and when we're serving hundreds of students across our campuses, we don't have the time to work intensively with students that have IEPs or 504s, even though these students usually need some more focused and personalized interventions.

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Now, in many areas these responsibilities are cast off onto another person a school psychologist, an outside mental health practitioner, someone like that.

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But the down and dirty real world story is that those folks often aren't available every school day for students to access.

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But guess what we are?

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And so we have to be intentional in our approaches for our special populations, even if we think it's not within our purview, because it may be more appropriate for us than we even want to admit.

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We tend to want to focus on our Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions, with classroom guidance, individual counseling, consulting with parents and staff.

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Those kinds of activities and those get harder and harder to balance and achieve as our numbers increase.

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So if you have a lot of students who are bilingual or who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds or who have IEPs.

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You're going to feel like your candle is lit at both ends, right.

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And then, beyond the time and the numbers of students that we're serving, we also have a need for specialized knowledge.

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Parusi, goodnow and Noel, in 2004, found that school counselors often feel unprepared to address the unique challenges of special populations.

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Because we need specialized knowledge about disabilities, cultural competence, how students acquire language, what gifted education should really look like.

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Language, what gifted education should really look like.

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For example, if you're working with students in special education, you have to understand what IDEA mandates or how accommodations work under 504.

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Bilingual students may need more language and cultural support.

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You may not have sufficient training in ESL or cross-cultural counseling right, maybe you've never had the opportunity to develop those.

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Hanson Baca and McClure, 2012, found that school counselors might not have sufficient training in English as a second language instruction or cross-cultural counseling to be able to effectively serve bilingual students.

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So it gets messy, right, it gets complicated and there are all of these skill sets that come in play as we seek to serve special populations on our campus and then beyond.

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Even all of that is finding time to coordinate with other professionals like special education teachers, speech language pathologists, bilingual teachers, social workers, outside mental health supports these folks are essential in supporting our students in special populations.

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In supporting our students in special populations Most especially, I think, if students have IEPs or 504 plans, we may need to coordinate services across a lot of folks.

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But that's hard because we have scheduling conflicts.

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Sometimes it's difficult to communicate.

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Communicating by email is overrated in my opinion, and there's a lot of room for misunderstandings, for dropping the ball.

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But then, too, we have to consider what Brian and Griffin 2010 called differing professional priorities, meaning that, for example, special education teachers would be focused on the academic accommodations that a student needed, while school counselors are looking at the social, emotional well-being of the student.

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So when we have all these different focuses going on at the same time, it requires some skill, some time and some intentionality to coordinate all of these facets of education that we really honestly feel like we don't have.

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And then Bauman and team 2004 found that language barriers and cultural misunderstandings can really harm collaboration when we're working with bilingual students and their families.

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So then we have to start serving as the mediators between families and the school to make sure that everybody feels like they're being seen and heard.

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And we're adding this on top of an already full workload of all of our national model expectations, all of our extra duties, all of the job responsibilities we can and should have.

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It just becomes overwhelming.

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So what do we do then if we feel like we're unable to meet all of these needs?

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What do we do?

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How do we address the needs of our student special populations without feeling like we are just being buried alive?

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Well, research says there are some things that we should be looking toward if we want to be effective.

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Number one is building a team approach.

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One of the most effective ways that we can meet the needs of our special populations is considering them through a collaborative team approach where everyone gets around the table and shares the responsibilities of the situation and shares their expertise.

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If we can come together in these kinds of teams, bryan 2005 says that we can ensure that each student receives comprehensive and well-coordinated services.

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Teams like your student support teams can review students to look at interventions, look at student data and problem solve together.

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When you do that, you've got to make sure that all relevant people are there.

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So if a student with a 504 plan is struggling, even though they have classroom accommodations, we can work with the teacher and the administrators to consider some new strategies.

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If we're working with bilingual students, we need to make sure that our ESL or bilingual staff are at the table and that we have other people there who are cultural experts to help us address language and cultural needs, and we need to have teams that can maintain open communication.

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This is a tall order, y'all, I am not going to lie, and I think it's one that is often not done well in schools.

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Ssts or student support teams, whatever you might call yours on your campus they're all often subpar, they don't follow up.

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It's kind of a one and done meeting and then we hand them off to somebody else because they're time consuming, they require lots of work and they require someone to coordinate them, which we know is not an appropriate role for us.

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But on the flip side of that, I can tell you I have seen firsthand the rewards of a well-run consultative campus and I can attest to the tremendous effects that are gained from a very methodical and intentional approach with students.

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Two, I will say so many times, when we go to the table for something like a student support team, we assume that we already know what the problem is, and so we only invite the people that we think we need to invite instead of inviting all the perspectives.

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And while that seems efficient and like it's streamlining, it's actually not.

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I was privileged to serve on a rural campus that was very, very strong, with their student support team, and it was time consuming and we did meet a lot, but the upside to that was we were giving students amazing levels of customized supports and one of the greatest strengths of that team was that all areas of expertise were at the table and I cannot count how many times we'd be in discussion about a student and all of a sudden someone from the other side of the table would kind of say hey, hold on, wait a minute, I've got a thought.

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I think we might be headed down the wrong road, and they would offer their professional expertise and instantly we all had a whole new take on the problem, which ended up being right on target.

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Had we not had all those perspectives around the table, we would have missed it and we would have wasted time trying to provide some sort of accommodations or interventions for the student that they really didn't need because we weren't addressing the root of the problem.

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That's the beauty of these wonderful consultative and collaborative teams.

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Second, to meet our students' special population needs, we need to leverage our community resources.

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We don't have to do everything, we don't have to provide all the services, we don't have to provide all the interventions.

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Sometimes we can connect kids with community organizations for additional support.

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If we have students who have emotional disturbances or mental health concerns, let's connect them to local mental health agencies for additional counseling services.

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That doesn't mean that if they're written into the student's IEP, that we don't have to provide them anymore, but it does mean the likelihood of those counseling services being long-term and intensive lessens because of the outside supports.

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In addition, think about non-profit organizations, community-based cultural organizations and advocacy groups that can benefit students by connecting them with resources, with translation services, sometimes even legal support if they have language barriers or immigration concerns.

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We are in a unique position where we can serve as liaisons between those organizations and our students and families so that they can get the wraparound supports that they need.

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That, too, makes me think about things like health clinics, social workers, housing services right, because often our special population students face significant socioeconomic barriers, and so the more that we can do to lessen those barriers, the more support they're going to receive.

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And third, if you feel like you don't have the time or resources to meet the needs of all of your special population students, we might need to look at advocating with our administration through data collecting and analyzing data on academic performance, attendance, behavior of specific populations, for our students with disabilities, for our bilingual students, et cetera, and so on, to show who's struggling, what areas are they struggling in and what kind of interventions might be required.

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And I'm going to challenge you here and say how long has it been since you pulled special pops data for your campus?

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If you ever have, how long has it been?

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Really, be honest with yourself.

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Do you know how academics compare among your sub pops?

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Do you know how behavior compares when about discipline or graduation rates?

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These are things that we need to be looking at in our school counseling programming.

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Right, and then, last, I think this is just sort of an ethical imperative we need to pursue professional development opportunities that are based on specific populations.

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We need to be learning and growing with respect to students with disabilities, for we need to develop cultural competency regarding the students that are present on our campuses.

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We need to understand IEP implementation.

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What are the timelines, what are the mandates, how do we write goals and how do we know if we've reached them or not?

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And we need to be well-versed in trauma-informed counseling.

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Peruzzi and team 2004 found that professional development in areas such as culturally responsive counseling and special education law increased school counselors' ability to advocate effectively and provide relevant interventions.

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And you can also improve your knowledge by engaging in peer collaboration and mentorship with professionals who have specialized knowledge in working with special pops, just like our School for School Counselors Mastermind.

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You hear me talk about it every week, but when you get in a room with people who actually do that work, they have similar students to yours, they've been there, they get it.

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It's a whole new understanding that you begin to develop and cultivate with regard to your work.

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So y'all, meeting all of these needs, when we consider all the special populations on our campuses, can be completely overwhelming.

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But if we think through these strategies, I think they're gonna be able to help us take some practical steps toward better serving our students building a team approach, leveraging our community resources, advocating for equity among our students and engaging in professional development to get the specialized knowledge that we need.

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Once we do that, we're going to see benefits not only for our students in the form of improved academic performance and better social-emotional outcomes, but also school-wide, we're going to see a more positive school climate.

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We're going to see improved student achievement and reduced disciplinary issues and who does not want that?

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I think that's all what we are aiming for.

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Y'all, this episode is not a call to do all the things.

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I know that you may be working at capacity already just to get the basics done, and even then you may be feeling like you're falling short.

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This episode really is an attempt to get you to think about how some things could be shifted, maybe approached differently or looked at with a broader mindset, to make sure that we're meeting all student needs effectively.

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Because, let's face it, serving all students on our campus isn't just a goal, it's a mandate.

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The good news is, we've just talked through some strategies to help you begin addressing those needs, but y'all, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

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So, again, if you want to learn more about this, if you want to learn about resources, opportunities for growth and learning, or just engage in some consultation, our School for School Counselors Mastermind is at the ready and you can find out more about it at schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash mastermind.

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Schoolforschoolcounselorscom slash mastermind.

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All right.

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Remember you make a difference each and every day.

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Even when it feels like you don't, you do so.

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Take care of yourself too.

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Don't feel like you have to jump into all these things at once.

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These are just ideas to keep in your back pocket for when the time is right, y'all.

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I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast, so keep listening, but in the meantime, I hope you have the best week, keep being awesome and take care.

School Counselors' Secret Weapons for Special Pops Success

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