Mentoring

Mentors

I'm thrilled to start a new program at my school called "M&M" (Mentor & Me)!  I am excited to pair students with an adult on our campus to help foster positive relationships.  The mentors are meeting with me this week in order to discuss the intended outcomes of this program, as well as, the multitude of opportunities with their mentee throughout the school year.  In the initial stage of this program, I have asked each team to select five students to be paired with a mentor.  Once the list of "mentored" students has been established, I will send a permission slip home with the students before the students are paired with a mentor.

Another component of this mentoring program will be to establish positive peer connections through my "mini me" program! (okay, kidding with the name)  I have begun a peer leadership team with a group of fourth graders called P.A.L.s. (Peers as Leaders)  A wonderful colleague of mine shared this idea at one of our counseling meetings and I absolutely loved it!  Our school already has an established group of fifth graders in Student Council.  I wanted to give the fourth graders an opportunity to embrace leadership, mentoring, and helping positions throughout our campus.

I have already received several applications from interested students.  One of my favorite parts of the P.A.L.s application was the narrative aspect where the students had to indicate the reasoning why they would make an excellent P.A.L.!

I can not wait to begin this journey with the students and staff on my campus in order to foster healthy relationships that impact so many!

Staff mentor treats ~ a little chocolate is always a nice incentive!
(Idea adapted from an idea on: http://www.schcounselor.com/)

Counselor Coffee Chats

Coffee Chats!

Last year was my first experience hosting Counselor Chats with parents and staff.  This year instead of merely selecting topics that I feel parents wish to learn about, I have sent out a Needs Assessment in order to obtain parent input.

I'm thrilled that I have received over seventy responses from parents regarding possible topics of interest to them.  Here is my Needs Assessment:

Needs Assessment for Parents

Parents have also submitted that they would like to learn more about the following topics: self-esteem, organization, anger, and anxiety.  I love it!  (Btw, the STAAR is our standardized test for our 3rd - 5th graders)

As always, I can't wait to schedule the chats and meet with the parents!

Scheduling Guidance Lessons

Scheduling of guidance lessons for me has evolved from the typical paper and pen circulated sign up calendar.  Several years ago I transitioned to a technology approach to scheduling guidance lessons with the teachers.

Last year I used Sign Up Schedule.  While this was of course free, it didn't have the capability (or not that I noticed) to send an email to me notifying me of the dates/times that the teachers signed up for lessons.

This year I am using Sign Up Genius and I LOVE it!  This online scheduling system not only has several cute templates to choose from, it also sends an email to me when teachers sign up for lessons!

I'm still hoping to figure out a system that syncs the sign up times and places them onto my calendar.  I think I would have to convert to a Google calendar system which wouldn't really work since my work calendar is GroupWise.

Alas, this is still so much "cooler" than the traditional paper and pen aspect!