Your Role Does Not Define You

[00:00:00] Hey, y'all- Steph here. How you doing today? I'm so glad that you've joined me again for another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. Again, it's a little surreal and strange to even think about putting this out in the world. So, your support means so much to me and to my team, as we strive to get this out to you, um, 

[00:00:19] We're just so thrilled and humbled that you choose to spend some time with us. 

[00:00:24] So I have a story for you today. When I was in junior high school, probably around 12 or 13 years old, my family moved from our home in Texas- I'm sure you can tell by the accent that I'm from Texas. We moved from Texas to North Carolina. And so of course, you know, my brother and I ended up going to a new school meeting, new friends, and it was fairly obvious as we spoke to these new friends at school that we came from a different place than where most of them were born and raised. Our Texas twang gave us away, and everyone was just really fascinated with the accent, which seems funny to me because we thought theirs was pretty odd. You know, the sort of the Southern drawl. 

[00:01:12] Anyhow. So kids would ask us about, you know, "Why do you talk like that? Are you really from Texas?" Those kinds of things. My brother and I kind of invented some personas about ourselves. We had those kiddos convinced that not only were we from Texas, which was true, but we rode our horses to school. 

[00:01:33] And we wore boots and chaps every day. And just a lot of wild, Texas lore, sort of woven into all these stories and all the little details we would provide our friends and. Oh, my goodness. It made us celebrities for a little while because it was just so different and so unique. The funny part about that was that it never really went away. 

[00:01:57] And although we only lived there for a short time, we were always known as the kids from Texas that rode a horse to school. Like we could just never, ever shake that. Even though- we'd never ridden a horse. My brother and I, both of us, had never ridden a horse. We weren't your, you know, ranching Texans that you imagine, you know, when you look at books or see westerns or something like that. We were just normal kids, but everyone around us just swore up and down, you know, we would, we would ride our horses to school, and- I don't know- feed them a carrot at lunch or something- I don't know what they were imagining. 

[00:02:31] That story, that persona, that we built around ourselves eventually came to define us in our friend's eyes. When they looked at us, that was instantly what they thought about. And if there was a lull in conversation ,it immediately turned to," What's Texas like? Do you have roads, or do you just have dirt?"

[00:02:50] Those kinds of things. It's super funny. We have kind of a similar problem in school counseling. Where we are given roles to fulfill on campus, and we start to feel as though that persona identifies us or defines us as a school counselor. And that can get dicey and pretty dangerous, pretty fast. 

[00:03:12] Our world is very interested in comprehensive programs and RAMP status and "who gets the award?" And all those are great. If you're in an environment that can support those aspirations. The sad truth is the majority of us are not. We are not on campuses serving caseloads that allow us to do a lot of those things. And so when we have this idea in our head about what, the perfect school counselor is supposed to be, or the benchmarks we think we're supposed to be hitting, we can start to feel down on ourselves pretty quickly. 

[00:03:53] So if this is you, or if this has ever been you, I just want to really encourage you and remind you that the role that you're given on your campus does not define you. 

[00:04:05] If you are given a role where you are in a specialist rotation and you're teaching 80,000 lessons a week, and you don't get time to see kids one-on-one because you're just so snowed over with that schedule. That's no shame in your game. You didn't ask for that to happen, I'm assuming. That was something that was assigned to you. 

[00:04:26] Or, you know, maybe you're one of those school counselors that just almost has to shut down at certain times of the year and hardly visit with a student because you're so busy trying to administer testing. Same thing. You didn't ask to do that. You weren't, you know, raising your hand, jumping up and down saying, "Here! Pick me, pick me! I want to do all this extra stuff!" No. That's been assigned to you. And we're paid to follow directions. 

[00:04:51] But at the end of the day, you can't let those other things come back and bite you, and make you start to believe that because you're tasked to do these things, that you're any less of a school counselor than anyone else. 

[00:05:06] Y'all, our work is hard. The environments that we work in are usually pretty dysfunctional and we are trying to navigate it all with grace, with grit, and with a servant leader's heart. And that's a tall task for anybody. So if you're one of those people that feels like you ought to be hitting all those expectations- you should be nailing all those benchmarks- you have got to stop and remind yourself: your role doesn't define you. Your role defines your campus' expectations. That's it. It says nothing about you. And as long as you're working hard to serve students to the best of your ability, you got nothing to worry about. 

[00:05:54] 

[00:05:54] I hope that was helpful to you. It's something that we talk about a lot in our Mastermind program, and something that just bears some repeating. It's easy to forget, and we don't ever want you to forget how amazing and precious you are to your students and to your staff, and just as a human being, wanting to do good in the world. 

[00:06:16] That's tremendous. 

[00:06:18] So, I have a question for you. Have you joined our School for School Counselors Facebook group yet? We would love to have you in there. We would love to hear your ideas and perspectives. We would love to see what lights you up about your job. Go to Facebook right now- join our School for School Counselors group: put podcast in your request so we can get you in quickly. 

[00:06:39] And if you're interested in the other programs that we have out there, go to schoolforschoolcounselors.com. Man, we've got everything laid out there for you. It changes periodically depending on the season and what's happening, but-

[00:06:51] We have a super- exciting event coming up. It's absolutely free to everybody: no cost, no charge, no obligation, no expectation. It's called the "Best Year Ever!" We've done this, I think, three times already, and it's one of our most popular programs. Folks have been asking us about when "Best Year Ever!" was going to start for weeks now, and we're so happy and excited to get the information out to you. 

[00:07:16] You can go to our website schoolforschoolcounselors.com/bestyearever to get signed up for it. All we need is an email address and that's just so we can remind you about the stuff coming up. And then if you don't want to hear from us anymore, you just push unsubscribe: no big deal. but we would love to get you in there to lay the foundation for your best year ever to maybe learn some things that you didn't know before, get some ideas, get some processes in place for the beginning of the school year, so that you can walk in the first day feeling like a boss: like you're on top of your work, and that you're ready to go. That's truly what we want for you! So go check that out schoolforschoolcounselors.com/bestyearever. 

[00:07:56] I can't wait to see you in there, and I'll be back with another episode soon. So until then, y'all have the BEST day!