A hen in the hand...

I had the ABSOLUTE pleasure of attending ISCA Annual Conference last week. 
{ISCA= Indiana School Counselor Association}

It was AMAZING! Not only did I attend, and partake in some pretty great sessions- I also presented on Technology! I used a prezi.com that you can find here:

http://prezi.com/bbpwudgojq_z/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

It has some pretty good techy things that have made my life easier. 

In addition, I met the fantastic Sarah Altman (ISCA President) and Kelly Johnson, Communications Chair for ISCA ... (and you can find her at kellycounselor.com). I was asked to be on the Communications Team and I am SUPER excited!

On a last note- isn't it funny how no matter the AMAZING work we do, something, someone, some situation always brings it down?!?! No matter being all caught up, nominated for School Counselor of the Year, have my schedules as caught up as can be, presenting at a State Conference- there's always someone who is unhappy. So friends- HANG IN THERE! I want you to know I appreciate EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU! 

Short and to the point! I love you all!

Stay classy Counselors ;)

JW

BINDERS! ... but maybe too many?

So, I love binders. When I started in my career at the beginning of last year, there were papers and lessons and worksheets ALL OVER THE PLACE. Plus with having two buildings, I had some stuff at one school and other stuff at the other school. I made it my mission to, by the end of the year, have a binder at each building labeled for each topic (Bullying, Harmony, Excellence, etc.). Whenever I get something new, I make two copies, put one at each building, and I am set.

This bottom shelf has my binders for lessons, character education, etc.

I also have others binders that were maybe a better idea when I first started... I have several binders at each building with tabs for different committee meetings, faculty meetings, Elementary counselor meetings, all-district counselor meetings, etc. And now what I have is a stack of papers at each building because I don't feel like finding the right tab and filing all these things. 

So, in my attempt to become more paper-less, I have found this:

Now, maybe you've heard of Evernote, maybe not. I had but had never looked into what it is. In a nutshell, Evernote is a note-taking program. 
Did I just lose you? Hang in there, seriously this can help you! Here's how...

- Go to Evernote 
- Create a FREE Account (now, you can make a Premium account, but come on, we work in Public Education- who has $$ for that? Go get it free!)
- After that and after you log in, you will find this screen

I just started using it, so yours will look a lot like mine!

Now, if you're anything like me, you will have a LOT of different "hats" you wear... Luckily, Evernote can let you make as many "Notebooks" as you need to file your notes in.

These are just a few of the meetings/ committees I attend

So you have all these Notebooks, now what.
Well, on that main screen, it said "+ New Note"
Click it...

Then you just start typing. I am making the "title" as the date. I don't need to put what the meeting is since I can select what Notebook it goes in. 

So you've taken some notes, GREAT! But then tomorrow, the meeting "recorder" emails or hard-copies the actual minutes from the meeting to you. Now you have to print those off and file them. Or make a special folder in your email which is already bogged down enough...

With Evernote, all you have to do is Attach that file to the note and delete it from your email/ computer. Evernote stores it!

The good thing is also that the note automatically saves so you don't really have to worry about losing it. 

I was lucky enough before Christmas Break to get to order an iPad Air and guess what... THERE'S AN APP! So you don't have to lug your laptop into a meeting. It's just as easy from the app.

So maybe this will work for you and maybe it won't. Maybe you have a better way of keeping notes. One of my New Year SMART Goals (coming in a later post) is to do a better job of keeping track of meeting notes/ data. Either way, do what works for you but please don't be afraid to try something new!

I'd love to hear how YOU do minutes/ meeting notes.

-JW

Setting Goals... and Keeping Them!

As I think about goals, I think about my goal to write a post once a week... BWAHAHAHA! Yea, that has slipped. But I have not given up and will continue to try my best for the six of you that actually read my blog :)

But in thinking about Goal Setting, I wanted to share something that my Falcons school does for goals (and that I would love to implement at our Wildcats school).

When I started last year, our Principal and Librarian had a program going for 9-week goal setting. 

During Library time, every 9 weeks (at the end of the grading period) our students would come up with an academic goal and try to achieve it. If they achieved it, they got a sucker and we took their pictures and hung them on a bulletin board by the Library. They would also get an extra recess (free-time in the gym or outside) during the next week's Library time. It's a fantastic way to get them accustomed to setting goals and working towards them and some positive reward for a job well done!

However, when I started, our Principal kind of "handed" the program over to me and I am in-charge of it now. And we have made some technological changes :)

Before: 
Student would have a sheet of 8.5x11 paper that said:

Name:_____
1st 9 week goal:_____
2nd 9 week goal:_____
3rd 9 week goal:_____
4th 9 week goal:_____

We had one sheet for every student, 1st-6th. All split up by classroom in a filing cabinet in the Library. Every nine weeks, we would get out the almost 300-sheets of paper and check each student to see if they had met their goal or not. This also meant that for nine weeks, the students had NO idea what their goal was because frankly, let's admit it, they forget! And with them closed up in a filing cabinet in a closet in the Library, no one wants to ask to see it and frankly, no one wants to go rummaging around to find it.

Not an effective system.

After:
At the beginning of this year, I asked our Librarian how long she keeps the goal sheets (for data purposes). She told me that at the end of every year she pitches them... Every year almost an entire ream of paper trashed. Holy Smokes!

So we came up with a new plan. 

I created a Google Doc (yea, these things are SUPER useful!) that looks a little something like this:

I call up students one-by-one during their Library time (while they're finding a book) and we select their teacher (drop down menu), which 9-weeks it is (drop down menu with 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th), put their name, and type their goal. Older grades get to type their own and little kids are AMAZED at seeing their name and teacher on it. Then we hit submit and the information goes into a spreadsheet that looks like this:

All I have to do is print it out and I get a 1-page document with everyone's goal per class (I added a check-mark column to be able to check off if they made their goal or not). 

So I now have a 10-page document per grading period that is about 1/30th of what we had before. I give one copy of each class' to the teacher (in case their students want to know) and I keep a copy.

Next 9-weeks, we do the same process and at the end, I can sort by name to be able to see each students' progress with their goals. 

I LOVE this process and the students love seeing their progress with goals and really enjoy trying to beat each other. Going tech has really cut down on the time and, let's face it, it's pretty cool too! Plus all the paper we save!! It also gives me track-able data to show what I have done with students and I count it as a classroom lesson (since every time we meet we go over what makes a good goal, how we can achieve our goal, etc.)

Do you do any school-wide goal setting at your school?

Let me know!

And as always, have a great day!

-JW

Just a lazy, tech-filled Sunday...

Yesterday, the family and I spent an evening shopping, eating, and Geocaching in Muncie. Despite being a great time, it somehow equated to our daughter being up sick with nightmares, my wife being up until 4am unable to sleep, and my hallucinating (thinking our son had gotten up and me taking him back to bed- neither of which happened). 

So, we spent the day lazily around the house. With the soothing sounds of the kids playing in the den, I had the opportunity to overcome come technology obstacles and fears that had been staring me in the face! And thanks to some amazing blogs, I was able to steal incorporate :) some technology

 into my counseling! Here's how:

1) Minute Meetings. Having two schools (both with over 350 students), I found it very difficult to meet every student in the beginning of last year. Our Elementary Schools do one lesson per month for EVERY classroom and much like writing a book and penning that first sentence, I was a new counselor and very unsure how to do that first "intro lesson". If you are unsure what Minute Meetings are, Danielle Schultz first had the wonderful idea here and Andrea Burston tech-ed it up here. Despite my fears, I found the Google Drive forms quite easy to use! I took some information that I wanted to know about my students and dove right in!

Once one form was done...

I duplicated it and renamed it for my second school. The nice thing about Google Documents is that ALL the data from these forms is sent to one Excel sheet. Can you say "DOCUMENTATION FOR MY PROGRAM!!!" I think this will be a great way to get an initial meeting for all students and a starting point for new students to our school. Plus it's super iPad-friendly and the kids love using my iPad!

2.) Now, at the end of last year, I played around with different ways to keep notes. I also sent out an email to our state's School Counselor listserv trying to find out how everyone else kept records of sessions. What I found was that no two counselors keep track the same way. I began experimenting with an Access template, EZ Analysis Timetracker, the Time Task Log from my Grad School Days, a Google Doc template, and different paper forms. I got a lot of ideas from Danielle Schultz's post here. What I found (and it was reaffirmed today) is that I will definitely be using Google Docs! I started the form today and am excited about how it's going to turn out! I will make another post on keeping data (with some info from an ASCA session I attended!) once the form is done and when school starts.

3.) Lastly, I had been toying with the idea of starting a Facebook page for the blog, but kept getting hindered by thoughts of "who on FB cares about what I have to say" (hmm... much like my initial thoughts on "who cares about me- why should I start a blog?!). Luckily, AnnMarie Birster at School Counselor Companion wrote this blog TODAY on creating a Facebook page! Divine intervention! So, I am happy to say that A Fellow School Counselor now has a Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/AFellowSchoolCounselor

All of these things took a little bit of time, yea. And are any of them set in stone and perfect? Definitely not. But I am pleased with the long term affects this will have on my time with students and for our Elementary Counseling department!

Stay tuned for more on my year, my offices, and my recent buys :)

-JW