Unpacking School Discipline: A Surprising Guide for School Counselors

Well , hey there , welcome back to another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast . This is your school counseling friend , steph Johnson , back with another episode . I'm so excited to be back with you on the regular again after a bad illness about a week and a half ago . I'm excited and I want to try to amp this podcast up . I feel like we've got so much awesomeness going on , so many great ideas and things to think about threaded through all of these episodes , that I just want to bring you more , because I'm at no risk of running out of ideas here . I keep thinking of things on the regular , things that I see all of you talking about , conversing about in your social media groups , asking questions about in our School for School Counselors Facebook group and in our Mastermind group , and I just want to build this amazing network of phenomenal school counselors . That is my dream and my vision , my goal , because as we do that , as we support and empower one another , we're going to elevate our profession and , my friends , we could stay tuned for a little elevation . I'm telling you , school counseling is under attack in a lot of places and we need to mitigate all of those threats . So that's what we're doing here on the podcast . I hope you're enjoying some increased frequency of episodes . We're going to bump it up to two episodes a week here for a little bit . See how we do . It's going to be tricky . In addition to doing the podcast , I'm a full-time school counselor , just like you . I show up to work at 7.15 every morning , I work throughout the school day and then I've got kiddos to take care of in the evening that are going to marching band practice and art lessons and piano lessons and all the things . One thing I've learned in being a late in life mom is that I think I probably would have had a lot more energy for this stuff back in my 20s and 30s , when I could have run a little bit faster . Nevertheless , we're going to work hard . We're going to try to bring you a little bit more information , a little bit more inspiration for your week , hopefully some things to think about over the weekend before you return on Monday .

In this episode I want to talk about a theme that I see coming up a lot right now . It's an idea that circulates about this same time of year . It really gets started in earnest about September and peaks maybe in October , but we do hear some rumbles about it throughout the rest of the year the conversation is focused on school counseling and discipline . We know with that list that everybody likes to shove under their principal's noses about acceptable school counselor duties and inappropriate school counseling duties . We know that discipline is not in our arena . It should not be and I'm not questioning that .

But when it gets down to the day-to-day kind of stuff , when it's beyond discipline investigations , when it's going beyond punitive conversations , those kinds of things and we're getting into a little bit lower level discipline discussions people start having a lot of questions . One of the most common scenarios that I see discussed are the school counselors that have been placed into specials rotations on their campuses or they have some sort of a defined teaching schedule for social-emotional lessons in their schools . They get into classrooms or they're conducting their own classroom with these lessons and they suddenly run into this brick wall of sorts where they've been taught and have really internalized that school counselors should have absolutely nothing to do with discipline versus the reality of teaching in a classroom and having to promote discipline . Students can't learn if they can't hear you right . They can't learn if the classroom is chaos and we can't always love students out of their poor choices in the moment . We would love to be able to do that . That'd be amazing , but it's not always possible . So we have a lot of folks asking what do I do ? What do I do when these students are misbehaving , when I need to sort of lay the law down ? But I've always been taught not to be a disciplinarian . What do I do ? I'm going to give you my take on it this week . This is gleaned from years and years of experience in the schools a quarter of a century , if you can believe that . That makes me sound really old , anyway . So just some of my observations on school counseling , teaching , classroom management and discipline . To kind of shed some light on these situations and know that this doesn't just have to be in a classroom . This can be out in your common areas , on your campus passing periods , lunchrooms , those kinds of things . How do we address these concerns without being seen as a disciplinarian ? All right .

So in order to frame this conversation , I'm going to have you go way back in the archives of your brain , back to grad school , when you probably studied some kind of child development , child counseling , family counseling topic and you were introduced to the idea of the four parenting styles . Do you remember those ? It's likely you learned this along the way somewhere , when they talked about the four parenting styles of being uninvolved , permissive , authoritarian and authoritative . Have you heard these ? Yeah , you're probably thinking oh yeah , I think I do Remember something about those . Yes , you probably learned those .

Okay , so the way that I look at our role on campus maybe right or wrong , I don't know , but a lot of times I look at it through a lens of parenting styles . Now why would I do that If I'm not the student's parent ? That doesn't seem entirely appropriate , right ? But here's what I do know . I know that we have lots of students who are arriving on campus needing some positive parenting . Can you agree ? Like they're just they're not getting that out in their world , for whatever reason . They're not getting it . And we are considered in schools as in loco parentis . We assume that parental role when the children are in our care , and I also think that these four parenting styles really frame the different kinds of relationships that school staff can have with students . So let me just refresh your memory really quickly and give you a quick rundown of those four styles .

We're going to start first with the kind of extreme styles . All right , for two reasons . Number one you don't typically see a lot of these on a school campus . Number two they're more extreme , so they're not as common . We don't need to have as much discussion about them . First would be uninvolved parents . Involved parents are parents who offer little to no emotional support and they don't enforce standards of conduct in their homes . These are the folks that kind of give food , they give shelter and you're not getting much else out of them . It could be for a lot of reasons , but we know that the outcomes for students with uninvolved parents are very , very poor . We know that through empirical evidence .

Authoritarian parents are the kinds of parents who expect their orders to be obeyed without question , instantaneously , and they control their kids through punishment or through the threat of punishment . And we're not talking about occasionally here . We're not talking about occasionally a student gets punished , they get grounded or something like that . Or occasionally a parent will threaten If you don't get your room clean , you're going to be grounded for the next week . We're not talking about that kind of stuff . We're talking about every single thing that happens in that home is meant to be instantly obeyed or punished .

Very black and white , right or wrong . You're either with me or you're against me kind of mentality . All right , so those are the two extremes of parenting styles . I don't know that those have a lot to do with our conversation , but I want to kind of give you the 30,000 foot view here . So you've got all the components .

The two parenting styles that I think are most appropriate to this conversation are the permissive parents and the authoritative parents . So permissive parents and I'm going to start just using the wording of school counselor , because we're using these interchangeably just for the sake of argument , all right . So permissive school counselor is a school counselor who is responsive , who's warm to students , they're encouraging , they're pleasant , but they are also reluctant to enforce rules . This is how a lot of you were probably trained to see yourselves on campus . If you weren't trained this way , you've probably picked it up along the way in conversations on social media and things like that . If we're not supposed to be involved in discipline at all , it is not up to you to enforce the rules , because if you enforce the rules , you're going to create some animosity between you and the student , you're gonna create some friction there , and then how are you ever gonna be able to be a good counselor to them ? It's just not going to work .

Have you ever heard that argument ? Me too . I see it everywhere . But here's the thing , and you may have heard this and thought it was a lot of baloney . I think sometimes it's considered an old school viewpoint , but I think it's still very true .

We have students who crave limits . We have students who crave that redirection when it's done in a warm and empathic way . We have students who desperately crave relationship and don't know how to get the ball rolling unless it's causing some sort of a disruption , because that's the only way they get noticed at home . And so setting limits for students is not bad . If we are counseling students and we are trying to help them through solution focus , through our small groups , through whatever it is we're doing to meet the standard of the limits in the classroom , we're trying to teach students to stay in their seat , to raise their hand , to get their work completed right , to do all the things that they need to do to be a good student , that's enforcing limits . Why wouldn't we do it in quote , unquote , real life ?

You see where I'm going with this , because just because we wanna be warm , just because we want to create this rapport with students , if you're addressing limits correctly . It shouldn't be destroying that relationship . If anything , it could make it even better , which brings me to the category of authoritative parenting not authoritarian like we just talked about . This is authoritative where it's a balanced approach , where we expect students to meet certain behavior standards , but we're also encouraging them to develop their own autonomy and their own ways of meeting those standards . It's super important because we need to let them develop their individuality , we need to help them figure out how to self-regulate , and nothing for nothing . We need to teach them how to assert themselves when the time is right , and the only way that we can do that is to try to be attuned to where they are in their situations , to be supportive of them in those realities , but also to be able to set limits .

We have to be able to do that , and so , as you're working with students on campus , as you're working with them in classrooms , as you're seeing them in common areas and things like that , the message that I want you to take home is you are not exempt from setting a standard . You are not required to stand back and watch things go haywire because you feel like you're going to damage relationships if you set limits . That is not true . A lot of folks equate the term discipline with management and they're two different things . So as you go out into your campuses , as you're roaming around your schools , remember it's okay for you to correct , it is okay for you to set limits and standards . That in and of itself isn't the problem . The only time that becomes a problem is if you do it in a way that damages the relationship . It is okay for you to set limits , it is okay for you to set standards and expectations and it is okay for you to expect students to meet those . If they can't do it and they can't do it consistently , then you know that's your calling card right , that's your zone of genius . You can walk in and help students with that . But if it's just kind of an acute issue , if it's episodic , if it's just here and there , it kind of comes and goes or , you know , it just happens out of the blue one day , you can set standards and limits If you have the right approach to your work , if you have that authoritative mindset where we're going to be warm , we're going to be compassionate , we're going to be nurturing , we're going to bring the best of ourselves to that relationship , but we're also going to expect students to meet a certain behavioral standard . You're going to be okay . I never , ever , want you feeling like you have to be held hostage by students who want to take advantage of your kindness , who want to take control through your empathy . That's not a good place to be and you need to know it's okay to hold your ground .

We have lots of discussions about this in our Mastermind Group . We do case consultation every Tuesday evening . We would love for you to join us if you're interested in more about this conversation . Perhaps you're struggling in this area , because it is truly an art . For sure , it is not intuitive for most folks . It's difficult to learn how to balance being the school counselor but also setting standards . So if you'd like to join in the conversation , please hop over to schoolforschoolcounselorscom . Slash mastermind . We'd love for you to join us . We always have a seat waiting for you at the table .

These are some of the best conversations that we have . They're just so insightful and inspiring and fun . Even when they're difficult topics , man , we make a lot of headway . It's very , very enjoyable . So head on over to the website , sign up for those . I hope you enjoyed this little quick snippet , this little quick idea of something that I've seen floating around . I hope it helped you reframe your role on campus or perhaps just reminded you that you're on the right track with your students . Either way , take it to heart , lean into it and remember it is okay to be an authoritative school counselor . You don't have to be the permissive school counselor all the time , nor should you be All right . Y'all have a great weekend and a great week ahead . I hope it's the best ever . Take care .