The Gold Star Problem in School Counseling

The Shout Out That Stings

And before we wrap up today's faculty meeting, I want to give a big shout out to okay, here we go. Because there's always someone who is seen as going above and beyond for our kids, right? They're willing to take students for walks, let them cool off, give them a snack, listen to their problems, and they get recognized and everybody applauds. And at the same time, you're sitting there thinking about the same student who's been sent out of class 14 times, and you've been trying to get meaningful supports in place for weeks. You've had the conversations, you've looked at the patterns, you've made recommendations, and everybody keeps telling you they don't have time to do any of that. But somebody takes a student for a walk and they get a standing ovation. And here's the really weird part. You're actually glad that that person was there for that kid. You just can't figure out why everybody seems perfectly satisfied doing the same thing for the same students every single week. Hey, school counselor, welcome back. Have you ever noticed how some people in schools become almost legendary for their ability to step in and help kids? They're the ones who can calm down the most upset student, connect with the hardest-to-reach kid, or somehow get a student who's been refusing to work all morning to cooperate. And people love them for it. Sometimes that reputation is absolutely deserved. But I've also been thinking about what happens when the kind of helping that gets celebrated isn't necessarily the kind that's making the biggest difference. 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. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. Let's

Relief Versus Real Student Change

get back to that student who's been sent out of class 14 times. Somebody comes to help, they always do. They talk with the student, help them settle down, and eventually send them back to class. The student is calmer, the teacher gets back to teaching, and everybody is relieved. That's a pretty cool accomplishment. But helping a student through a difficult moment and helping that student experience fewer of these moments are not necessarily the same thing. Sometimes a walk with a trusted adult is exactly what the student needs. And sometimes that support needs to happen more than once. And really, there's nothing wrong with that. Progress isn't always immediate and it's not always linear. The question is whether we understand what that support is accomplishing. Are we seeing changes in the student's ability to participate, to regulate, or to manage difficult situations over time? Or have we simply gotten very efficient at responding when the problem occurs? Here's

Warm Glow And Public Recognition

what's interesting to me about this. Why can a response feel so successful to the adults involved, even when the underlying difficulties never change? Y'all, helping people feels good, doesn't it? You see somebody struggling, you step in, you make things better, and you walk away feeling like you've accomplished something. Economist James Andreone described a concept in 1990 called warm glow giving, the satisfaction people can experience from the act of helping. And schools give us lots of opportunities for that. Think about walking in a classroom where a student is absolutely losing their mind. The teacher's overwhelmed, everybody's distracted. So you spend a few minutes with the student. Things settle down, and the teacher gives you that little nod that says, Thank goodness you're here. You feel pretty good walking out of that room, don't you? That you help somebody through a really difficult moment. And it becomes even more satisfying when somebody else notices. Thank you so much. I don't know what we'd do without you. You're just so good with these kids. Maybe you even get one of those faculty meeting shout outs. Now, what you're getting here is two different rewards. There's the personal satisfaction of helping somebody, and then there's the recognition that you receive when other people see you doing it. And it's easy for both of those to become associated with the kind of helping that produces that immediate, visible result. Compare that to the flip side. The

Rewarding Rescue While Hoping Growth

situations that include several weeks of observation, consultation, planning, and follow-through. Maybe you're helping a teacher figure out what happens before the student escalates. Maybe you're recommending changes to their classroom structure or academic demands or their own responses. Or maybe you're revisiting a plan because the first approach didn't bring around the improvement that you wanted to see. That kind of work is not glamorous. And depending on what you're recommending, it might not even make you especially popular. Because now you're asking somebody to do something harder. You're asking them to change something. You're not just walking in and relieving the problem. You're asking them to participate in addressing it. And that doesn't always feel nearly as rewarding. Back in 1975, an organizational researcher named Stephen Kerr published a paper with one of the best titles I have ever heard on the folly of rewarding A while hoping for B. His point was that organizations can end up rewarding behaviors that don't necessarily produce the outcomes they're hoping for. And recognition can influence this a ton. A 2016 field experiment published in Management Science examined what happened when employees unexpectedly received public recognition during a work task. Recognition improved their later performance, with substantial effects among employees who hadn't even received the recognition. Now, this wasn't research in schools, but it gives us a reason to really think carefully about what public recognition might encourage. Imagine that the person who repeatedly comes to the rescue is the person that everybody celebrates. Teachers know who to call. Other adults start noticing what's getting praised. And the next time a student struggles, we call the helper. Nobody necessarily has to make a conscious decision to keep the pattern going. People can be operating with really good intentions while the organization or the campus, in this instance, reinforces the responses that are familiar, immediately rewarding, and publicly appreciated. And eventually that repeated rescue can start looking like evidence of success, even when nobody has established that the student's situation is improving. Think about what your school says it wants for students. Greater independence, improved classroom participation, fewer disruptions, stronger relationships, better academic and social emotional functioning. Now, think about what gets celebrated. Is it the teacher who follows through with a support plan for six weeks, even when it's inconvenient? Is it the team member that monitors progress and adjusts course when it's not working? Is it the counselor who helps change adult responses so that a student doesn't need to leave the classroom as often? Or is it the person that shows up and saves the day again and again and again? Y'all, we keep rewarding behavior we can see while hoping for an outcome that nobody's really checking on. And when you begin moving toward more comprehensive approaches as a school counselor, people may actually become less enthusiastic about your work because you're no longer providing them that same immediate relief. Some folks would really rather you just come get the student because that's a whole lot easier for them. We like feeling useful. We like walking into a difficult situation and knowing what to do. And we especially like hearing things like, I don't know what we do without you. Sometimes we are so good at responding to these immediate needs that we begin organizing our entire workday around them because they're urgent, they're visible, and we know we can help. Meanwhile, the consultation that we needed to follow up on gets postponed. The intervention data that we meant to examine has to be done later. And the proactive support that we wanted to develop, probably gonna have to wait till next week. And before long, we're doing everything everybody wants from us while the work we set out to accomplish keeps slipping out of our hands. Because the immediate reward of being helpful is powerful. And the school has learned to rely on us in that way.

How Counselors Burn Out As Fixers

And honestly, that's how a lot of school counselors work their way into complete burnout and overwhelm. They fill their days responding like Batman. So we have to be willing to examine our own helping behaviors with the same professional skepticism we'd apply to anybody else's. And that brings up another really uncomfortable truth. Sometimes the intervention that makes the adult feel most helpful is not the intervention that helps the student the most. Sometimes that adult is the teacher or the administrator, but if we're being honest, sometimes that adult is us. And that's a difficult place to be for school counselors who are trying to move toward more comprehensive programs. You're asking harder questions, looking beyond the immediate incident, and recommending changes that might require other adults to do things differently. And sometimes the result isn't just less than enthusiastic, it's downright hostile. We don't have time. That's not going to work in my classroom. Can't you just talk to him? And I don't think that we should write off how that feels to us as sour grapes. Because I'll tell you something that I haven't really talked about publicly before.

Doing The Work Nobody Applauds

As you know, I've become a nationally recognized school counseling speaker, podcaster, and consultant. I spend an unbelievable amount of time studying what works in school counseling, thinking through interventions and helping other school counselors make better professional decisions. I eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. And then I go onto a campus full-time every day, just like you do. Y'all, I am working my face off for my profession and for my students. Now at my school, we do staff shout outs. We even give out these little gold star pens that people can wear on their lanyards. And I have been at that school for almost a decade. You know how many times I've gotten a shout-out? Zero. Not once. Not one single gold star. And the thing is, I don't need somebody at my school to tell me whether I'm good at my job. But does that mean that it never stings to sit in a faculty meeting and watch somebody else get celebrated for doing something that I have spent weeks trying to move the student beyond? No, it still stings. And I don't tell you that to make you feel sorry for me. I tell you that because I want you to know it happens to all of us. And it is not a reflection of how good a school counselor you really are. But we also have to admit that knowing what you bring to the table doesn't make you immune to getting your feelings hurt when your work isn't recognized or shouted out by the people that you are working so hard to help every day. And a lot of the times, the worst part about it all is realizing that you have just not been able to make people see that the things they're celebrating are undermining the work you're running yourself into the ground trying to accomplish. It's complicated, right? I know how to swoop in. I can take a student out of a difficult situation, I can help them settle down, and I can send them back to class. I am good at that. And sometimes my job would be a whole lot easier if I just kept doing that. If I just kept being the person that everybody calls because they know that I'll make the immediate problem go away. But I also know that is not what the student needs. And sometimes the better professional decision means giving up the immediate satisfaction of being everybody's favorite helper. It means being willing to hear. Can't you just come and get him? And saying, let's look at what keeps happening and figure out how else we can change this, even when that's not what the other person wants to hear. And even when nobody hands you a gold star for it. And when you spend enough time working in that environment, it's easy to start second guessing yourself. Was it the right recommendation? Am I making this too complicated? Should I have just taken the student out of class and dealt with it? And when the people around you would prefer that you would make a different decision, it can be really hard to hold on to your confidence in your own professional judgment.

Who The Rescue Really Serves

So, remember that faculty meeting. Everyone's celebrating the person who saved the day again. A school can get so good at celebrating the rescue that nobody notices how often the same students still need rescuing. And I think there's something else here we ought to consider. The teacher gets relief, the helper gets recognition, and the administrator gets a problem off their plate. Everybody's getting something they need, except for the student. And maybe that's why some of your recommendations are so unwelcome. Because you're not just recommending a different way to help the student, you're recommending changes to an arrangement that's already working pretty well for everyone else. Maybe the reason your recommendations are so difficult to implement isn't that people don't understand what you're asking them to do. Maybe they understand exactly what you're asking them to give up. The warm glow of feeling helpful, the satisfaction of being the hero, the relief of getting that student out of the classroom, the appreciation and the recognition and the gold stars. And maybe that's why the way you want to help students isn't always seen as gold star worthy. Because you're asking for a whole lot of hard, behind the scenes, difficult to recognize work. And one more thing before we leave this episode: if you're doing that difficult behind-the-scenes work and nobody around you seems to understand what you're trying to do, I want you to know something. I think you deserve that shout out. You deserve the gold star. And sometimes it would be nice for somebody to acknowledge that you know what the heck you're doing. But there's a difference between somebody thanking you for being helpful and another professional recognizing that you're making good decisions.

Getting Professional Support And Closing

And that's one of my favorite things about the School for School Counselors mastermind. Every week we get together for consultation about the real situations happening on our campuses. You can bring the student concern you've been trying to figure out, the teacher who's pushing back on all your suggestions, or the situation where you're wondering if you're making the right call. We talk through what you've tried, why you've tried it, what the evidence suggests, and what might make sense next. Sometimes we identify something you need to approach differently. And sometimes after we've really talked it through, I get to tell somebody, you're making all the right calls. Your reasoning is good. You know what you're doing. And that's not because I'm just trying to make them feel better. It's because we've looked at the situation together intensely and we can both explain why that approach makes sense. So if you could use that kind of professional perspective too, I'd love to have you join us. You can check it out at the link. I'll leave it in the episode description. And until next time, remember, you deserve that gold star. Stay skeptical. Check your sources. Take care.