You’re Planning Your School Counseling Program Backwards

When August Plans Disappear

Every school year, there's a version of you that shows up with the plan. You've thought about it over the summer. You might have even written some things down, made a list of what you want to do differently, or maybe things you want to stop doing, or what you actually want to create this year instead of just feeling like you're hanging on by your fingernails. There's real energy in this version of you. There's real intention. And then September happens. And by October, you're not sure where that plan went because you're back on the same hamster wheel, doing the same things, fielding the same requests and problems, and wondering how a year that started out with that much intention ended up feeling like every other year. The thing is, your whole plan probably wasn't wrong. But the starting point was most school counselors plan their year around what the model says they should do or what their data says needs to happen, or what they think their administrator is going to be looking for. And those aren't bad inputs. We talk about them in my mastermind all the time, but they're all external. They don't answer the two questions that actually determine whether you're going to feel inspired or tired by the end of the school year. Hey, school counselor, welcome back. I'm going to be honest with you. Most school counselors plan their year the way most people make New Year's resolutions. Full of intention, built around an amazing ideal, and abandoned by the time real life shows up. Today, we're going to do something different, starting with what's actually true about you and what's actually true about your campus before we build a single thing. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work, and maybe, yes, a little bit of rebellion, you are in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast. Before we talk about how to plan your year, let's just be real about why most school counseling

Why Programs Get Built Backwards

plans implode within the first grading period. Because if we can't actually recognize the problem, we're just going to keep making prettier versions of the same mistake. And the problem, if I'm being very direct about it, is that most school counselors are building their programs backwards. Most of us were trained in a very specific way of building a school counseling program where you start with your campus data, you identify the needs, you put programming in place according to the national model, you implement all of it, and then you use those results to advocate. But then you end up advocating forever because there's no real endpoint. It's all focused on external validation from your principal, from your district, and maybe even your stakeholders. And when that validation doesn't come, you go back around the wheel and try again. That's how it becomes a hamster wheel. And once you get on it, it's really hard to get off. The problem is with the sequence. When the data chooses the problem and the model chooses the approach, your professional judgment never actually comes into the room. You're essentially executing someone else's plan. And when it doesn't work, because sometimes it won't, you'll go back to social media, ask the questions, find another approach, try that, and go around the wheel again. But my friend, that's not planning. That's reacting. Let me give you a non-school counseling example that might help this make more sense. These days, anytime I get on social media, I get bombarded with ads about dressing your best over 50, losing your weight in your 40s. And they're all delivered by people who look like they have it completely figured out. Cute outfits, perfect makeup, and y'all, there is Greek yogurt and chia seeds everywhere. What? Y'all, by most counts, I'm pretty average. I don't have a designer wardrobe, but I also don't look like I got dressed out of a dumpster most days. I could stand to lose a few pounds, but real life steps in and it doesn't step aside for the Instagram ideal. So what do I do? I do what I can. I get real about the fact that six-pack abs are probably not in my future. But I love Coca-Cola too much to give it up for some Pinterest perfect version of wellness. And instead, I lean on what I'm actually good at, what I can actually control, and what really matters to me, building the best version of my life within my real world circumstances instead of the ideal somebody else is trying to sell to me. That same mindset is exactly what a good school counseling plan requires. Not what does the model say I should be doing, but also what am I actually remarkable at? And what does my real campus actually allow me to do? Not what am I going to force to be different this year through sheer willpower, but what has

Build From Inside Out

historically been true about my campus and what do I know I can actually deliver within my real circumstances? One of these approaches is building from the outside in. The other is building from the inside out. And a year build from the inside out is the only one that's going to let you feel like you have any gas left in the tank by the time May rolls around. There are two very important questions we need to consider as we begin planning the year. Question one, what are you actually remarkable at? If you caught the last podcast episode, you already know where I'm going with this. And hopefully you've started thinking about your answer. But in case you're just jumping in here, let me give you the short version. Most school counselors, when they're asked what they're good at, give task list answers. I'm organized. I love building relationships with kids. I love helping families. And those are all true, but they're also not the answer. What makes you remarkable isn't what you do, it's the mechanism behind how you do it. The specific thing that you bring to a situation that almost nobody on your campus can do the same way. There are three places to look for these areas of remarkability. Interpersonal strengths. So not I'm good with people, but specifically how you're good with people and with whom. Another place to look is data and pattern recognition. Where do you see things clearly when everybody else kind of freaks out? And you can also look toward counseling approaches. What is the lens that you work through that you're really good at that just feels like second nature to you? And then once you kind of think through those, go back to the last episode if you need some clarification. But you can fill in these blanks. I'm good at what are you good at? Because I can do this

Define What Makes You Remarkable

thing by this unique way I do it when this happens. For example, I'm good at supporting dysregulated students because I can identify when and how they're escalating by slowing the pace of the situation down when everybody else is speeding up looking for quick answers. That's not a personality quiz result, right? That is true to me. That those are some of my unique strengths. And once you can also say a sentence like that pretty clearly, then you know what skills you're bringing to the table for your school year. Then question two: what does your campus actually allow you to do? This is the question that most

Three Real Limits On Campus

people don't even think about. And it's the one that determines whether your beautiful August plan is even going to make it through October. Your campus provides you a caseload. You have a real administrator with quirks and moods. You have real constraints on your time and your autonomy and what you're going to be asked to do that has absolutely nothing to do with your real job. A plan that does not account for those realities is not a plan. It's a wish list. So before you start planning anything, you need to get honest about what's really happening at your school, your actual working conditions, not the conditions you hope to have or the ones you wish you had, the ones you actually have right now. Here's how to think about it. There are three types of limits that most school counselors are working underneath. And each one is going to affect how you build your year. One is your caseload reality, your actual number. If you're carrying one to 700, your year cannot be designed for one to 250. Full stop. The percentages and time allotments that have been quoted to you are going to be useless. Your plan needs to account for triage, not comprehensiveness. And what can you deploy consistently, even in the hardest weeks? That's exactly what we're going to be mapping out on night one of our upcoming best year ever event. We're not going to talk about ideal programs and percentages and ratios. We're going to talk about the real ones. We're going to help you build a plan for your actual caseload in the time you actually have. Your second limit is your administrative reality. How much latitude do you actually have to make decisions? And where is it? Because for most of you, the answer isn't zero and it isn't, I can do whatever I want. It's somewhere in the middle. But nobody's taught you to look for that and figure out how to work with it. That latitude tends to be in three places. One, in the task itself, how you carry out the things that are required of you, even if the task is assigned. Two, the relationships that you build, who trusts you, who gives you the heads up, how you show up in conversations that never get to the principal's desk. And third, how you think about the work, what you're paying attention to, what you're tracking even though you don't have to, how fluently you can speak to your own impact on the fly in the moment when it requires it. And that fluency piece, y'all, that can genuinely change how people understand your job on your campus. Build it into your plan on purpose. Do not wait and throw it in as an afterthought. And then your third limit is time reality. What does a realistic week actually look like? Not the ideal week, not the beginning of the school year weeks where things are just starting to amp up, but actual in the messy middle weeks with interruptions and coverage requests and the meeting invites that someone forgot to send to your calendar. Your year plan needs to be built for that week, not the week that you wish you had. Planning around those three realities of caseload, administrative latitude, and time combined with what you're actually remarkable at is what creates a year that you can actually enjoy and feel like you've made an impact in instead of hanging on for dear life and looking at the job postings in February. Here's a more concrete example of what I'm talking about. Say your campus is struggling with attendance.

Attendance Example That Changes Everything

The hamster will version of the approach goes like this: you gather the preliminary data, identify the chronic offenders, and then go on social media asking what other people have done, or maybe you download a small group curriculum to address the issue. You implement it, you may or may not get traction, you may or may not get credit for trying. And then you start over again to either try to fix it because it didn't work, or on something completely different because you're just done with it. That's the hamster wheel mindset. It can feel like a grind because it is one. The practitioner version of you asks different questions first. Not what does the data say and what does the internet suggest, but what are you actually remarkable at? And what resources are actually available to you on your campus? Maybe your remarkable thing is building bridges with parents. So the attendance plan looks very different than if your remarkable thing is rallying the campus around student-led initiatives. Same problem, completely different approaches. And one of those is going to feel like it's yours, and one of them is going to feel like something you found on Pinterest that you never want to try again. So before you build a single calendar, write a single goal or set a single initiative for the coming year, answer the two questions. What are you actually remarkable at? And then what does your campus actually allow you to do? Your remarkable strength is going to tell you what to build around, and your real conditions tell you how big to build your initiatives. Put those two things together, and all of a sudden we're building a plan that actually belongs to you. And it doesn't require you to pretend like you have a different caseload or a different admin or a different set of circumstances than what you actually have. It's not going to leave you perpetually feeling like you're less than or like you're not a good school counselor because you can't hit these pie-in-the-sky benchmarks. The goal is not to reach May with the most comprehensive plan. It is to reach May still enjoying the work. And that is exactly what we're planning together

Best Year Ever Invitation

at best year ever. So if you're not registered yet, now is the time. So quickly before you go, everything we just talked about, the two questions, the three realities, building from the inside out, that's the kind of thinking we're doing about school counseling. And best year ever is where we're going to do the building. Four nights, July 21st through the 24th, it's live and it's free. On night one, we're going to engineer your year in reality, your real caseload, your real time, your real campus, not somebody else's ideal version of it. And by the time we hit night four, you're going to have a complete picture of what you would like your school counseling program to look like when it's not built on adrenaline and wishful thinking. That's the whole point. So if you've been listening to these last two episodes and you've been thinking, I actually think I might want to do this, best year ever is going to be where you do it. Registration is open. Link is in the episode description. So go click it and get all signed up. Hey, I'm Steph Johnson. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, be thinking about what are you actually remarkable at and what will your campus actually allow you to do? And as you develop your plan, let those come to the forefront to really support you in moving through the school year with intentionality and purpose and joy. Take care.