For something different, we asked school counselors to tell us what resources they felt no school counselor should do without, and to have a little fun with it. The resulting answers make for an enjoyable podcast and a wonderful Christmas list for the hard-to-shop-for-school counselor (but good luck finding THESE items!).
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Transcript
A rough transcript follows.
Matt Fleck:
Hi, everyone. Thank you for tuning us in for another Inspiring School Counselors podcast. My name is Matt Fleck and I’m here with my beautiful colleague Aimee Portteus. Hello, Aimee.
Aimee Portteus:
Hello!
Matt:
Aimee did something unique a few days ago reaching out to the very creative K-12 school counselors around our state through our very cool email listserv called CounselorTalk with a pretty simple question and you received a ton of responses, didn’t you, Aimee?
Aimee:
I did, I did. I received a ton of responses and I think people were ready to have a little bit of fun. So this was a good time.
Matt:
And so what was the question?
Aimee:
So I asked school counselors if they would like to share a list of resources that no school counselors should ever be without, but I wasn’t looking for the typical list of curriculum and social skills games and career exploration software, although those resources are super important as well. Instead, I was asking them to give me the resources that they would have if they could come up with any way to find it. Um, and our listeners did not disappoint, Matt!
Matt:
So this podcast is all about their responses and I really haven’t looked ahead too much. So this should be fun discovering what they said. So where do you wanna start?
Aimee:
Well, I have a nice list here and it’s in no particular order, but I think every one of the, um, items on the list will strike a chord with our listeners and maybe make them giggle just a little bit. So number 10 on the list is invisibility cloak. And that was just the example I shared to get everyone’s juices flowing. You know what an invisibility cloak is, Matt?
Matt:
Uh, yeah, but you can explain it.
Aimee:
If you’ve ever seen a Harry Potter movie, you know it. Invisibility cloak is so I’ve always said that would be a perfect thing for getting from crisis A to potential solution B without people stopping you with the “Are you busy question?” all the way along the way. So, yeah.
Matt:
Yeah!
Aimee:
Yeah. Most people thought that would be a good idea. They actually had a lot of input on how to answer the, “are you busy?” question. Um, which I won’t include here, but it might be another episode.
Matt:
Good future episode! Yes. I was thinking of common phrases that just annoy the heck out of you and that was one of them.
Aimee:
Are you busy? Seems to like strike with every every school counselor that I talk to.
Matt:
But I love an invisibility cloak. I mean just even having one so that you could hide for a while from people, maybe so you could eat your lunch. Yeah, I don’t know.
Aimee:
That would be nice for a full lunch hour. That’d be great. <laugh>.
Matt:
What else?
Aimee:
Well, um, the next most popular one was the ability to clone ourselves.
Matt:
Oh yeah!
Aimee:
Yeah. So Kate Jones at Orleans Junior Senior High School believes that if there were just more of each of us, we’d be able to get more done. And Kelly Guard of Riddle Elementary School agrees and she adds that she would like to duplicate herself so she could be in two, three, or four places at the same time. When I read all that, I wondered if my clone could be at home doing laundry and on vacation at the same time. Yeah. Clones.
Matt:
So an invisibility cloak and a clone – sounds very science fictiony so far.
Aimee:
Yes. Yes. We have, we have, uh, creative counselors who are adding to our list here.
Matt:
<laugh>. Okay.
Aimee:
So the next one was very popular and I think I’m gonna need to take out stock in this one. And that was a magic wand.
Matt:
Oh yeah.
Aimee:
Yeah. A lot of people wanted to secure one of those. One school counselor said that she wants to use her wand to show students their trajectory based on the decisions they’re making now. I’m guessing that means she would like to show them both their good decisions and their bad decisions. Yeah. Amber Lamaster of Laville Elementary School would use her wand to help every child immediately and fix everything. Even though she acknowledges that we as school counselors are supposed to be helpers and not fixers.
Matt:
Yeah.
Aimee:
So I think everybody wanted a magic wand for one reason or another, but um, we had one school counselor who lamented the fact that she’s asked for one for years and it’s not an apparated yet.
Matt:
Apparated. Apparated?
Aimee:
Again, that is a Harry Potter term I believe.
Matt:
<laugh>. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that one. Apparated. Cool!
Aimee:
Yes. So hers hasn’t apparated and I, and I suppose we could say it also maybe got lost in Amazon. I’m not sure. One of the two!
Matt:
Yeah. Right. That’s a good idea. Well I think this sounds like a great list for Christmas. You know, magic wands for every counselor!
Aimee:
Absolutely. Absolutely! I think we talk about a comprehensive counseling program for every school. Maybe we need to talk about magic wands for every school as well!
Matt:
Yeah, yeah. Maybe the award is a magic wand for everyone.
Aimee:
There you go. A working one. They were all very adamant that it needed to be a working one. <laugh>
Matt:
Well that might be a little tougher.
Aimee:
Exactly. Exactly. So next on our list was pixie dust, which I thought was very interesting. So Michelle Tibbs from Elkhart High School suggested that we could all use a pinch or two of pixie dust.
Matt:
Yeah.
Aimee:
She believes that we could use it to give ourselves the power to fly with happy thoughts. I think she was thinking of, uh, Mary Poppins, if I remember correctly.
Matt:
I think she was on a little pixie dust at the time. But go ahead.
Aimee:
That might be true. So we all know that sometimes the work of a school counselor can be draining. So Michelle thought it would be great that if with a happy thought and a smidge of pixie dust we could fly to the other side of the building for our next meeting.
Matt:
<laugh>
Aimee:
I’m guessing it would make us enter into the meeting with a little more energy. Or at least a little bit of a giggle to give ourselves a lift.
Matt:
That’s great!
Aimee:
Another counselor, Kelly Gard said the same thing, um, that she agreed that pixie dust would be very helpful, but she was going to sprinkle it on negative people that she encounters.
Matt:
Oh, I love it.
Aimee:
So again, not sure if that was for the giggle or to make them fly away, but either way I’m sure it would help.
Matt:
Or throw an invisibility cloak over them perhaps so they disappear.
Aimee:
Exactly. You never know.
Matt:
I like this. Multiple uses for pixie dust. Wonderful!
Aimee:
Well, I can’t imagine you don’t have one use for pixie dust, right?
Matt:
Yeah, right, right. Let’s be creative here. Exactly. Nice. I’m afraid you probably have more here, right?
Aimee:
I do, I do. So next on our list is a pause button. This is also Michelle and she thought we should all have a pause button for those times when we were about to say things like, “Sure, I’d be glad to head up that committee,” or, “Yes, I’d be happy to take on that state report.” It’s one of those things you would hit pause and then you could back away slowly still smiling.
Matt:
Yeah, like a rewind button, too. So yeah, pause, rewind. Nice. Yeah. Or wouldn’t it be great to have something like that where everybody just freezes for a minute and you’re like, did I, what am I supposed to be doing here? Let me think about this for a little bit.
Aimee:
I believe there are several books and movies out there to that effect on all of these.
Matt:
On all of them. Yes.
Aimee:
Exactly. Exactly. Um, the next one on our list was from one of our newer to the profession friends and she said she’s looking for an Everything You Need to Know book that we all assumed we were gonna get at the end of our school counseling program. Um, then they would teach us everything from AP, SAT, PSAT, to courses and course codes, bullying prevention techniques, just everything you need to know in one book. So, um, I think it’d be good if we were able to provide that for people, but I’m afraid that it might be a manual so large we would not be able to pick it up. So there’s, there’s everything we need to know.
Matt:
Exactly. My first job as a school counselor, I remember them saying, we have a manual around here somewhere. I was like, oh, I really need it. I really need it. And I think that I didn’t realize for years that they were probably kidding, but I really thought that you really had a manual explaining it and I just never found it.
Aimee:
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Matt:
I love that idea? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Aimee:
We also had another elementary school counselor who told us she would love to see each of us have a time machine.
Matt:
Oh, good idea. That’d be great. Yes.
Aimee:
Yeah. It’s a little different than the pause button because what she’s saying is she would like to go back and be able to redo her classroom guidance lessons after she’s learned what worked and what didn’t work, which I thought was pretty cool. Or maybe just to respond differently in any given moment. She liked the idea of being able to say, not gonna do it that way this time. And then she also said the best way she would use her time machine would be to move into the future sooner when there was a break or long weekend right around the corner or something like
Matt:
<crosstalk>, not counting the last few days.
Aimee:
Exactly.
Matt:
Yes. Right. Oh my gosh. Don’t we all? Yes. Remember that. Don’t look at the clock, don’t look at the calendar. Just keep working. And then someday that break will come. Or summer, say.
Aimee:
That break will come and there’s a difference, the bell sounds different when it rings right before Christmas break somehow. I don’t know.
Matt:
Oh, that’s a great point. Yeah. But we have, we have holiday breaks coming up soon, so I’m sure a lot of people will get a chance to test that theory. Nice.
Aimee:
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt:
More?
Aimee:
Yeah, just a couple more here. Okay. Trudi Wolf from Loper Elementary School would love to be given a crystal ball so that she could know that all of her efforts and her time, her caring that she pours into students will one day have a positive impact on them.
Matt:
Oh, nice.
Aimee:
Wouldn’t that be a great way to end every day? Just gazing into the fabulous futures of our kids.
Matt:
Yeah. That would’ve kept me going.
Aimee:
And our last one is from Marta Pierce of Indian Springs Middle School and she asked for what I know everybody wants for Christmas: time in a bottle. Can you think of anything more perfect than that?
Matt:
Perfect! time in A bottle?
Aimee:
Yep. And yet I would think that you would just take a whiff when you needed it. Just 10 more minutes before I get something done or before I have to go to lunch duty or any of those things.
Matt:
Oh, yeah. Gosh. Just more time, period. Wouldn’t that be nice? Just more time. Just more, like if it’s in a bottle or in a box, it’s gonna be more time.
Aimee:
Yeah. But time in a bottle sounds better to me than extending your day another couple hours somewhere. Yes. Yeah, that sounds exhausting.
Matt:
Yeah. Maybe a couple more of you. That’s back to the clog. No, isn’t it? These are our wonderful ideas and if anybody knows where on Amazon you can buy them, please let us know.
Aimee:
I’m, I’m sure the supply chain is low on all of these!
Matt:
Yes, exactly. We’re backed up. Sorry. Uh, any other ideas with that was the majority of Those are the ones we had.
Aimee:
Yeah, I was really excited and I really wanna thank our people who I reached out and shared with us. It was just a lot of fun to read your insights.
Matt:
Good. Yeah, we laughed a lot too. We did. Yes. Well, a great idea, Aimee. So the next idea might be those phrases that, um, annoy the heck out of us as school counselors, but, uh, for the time being, if you didn’t get a chance to weigh in with your best idea of what no school counselors should do without, you have a chance to let us know, because we’d love to hear from you. We’ll add this question to our, we can do this, can’t we, to our Inspiring School Counselor’s podcast form, which we have posted on our website.
Aimee:
Yes, absolutely. Let’s add that.
Matt:
So there’s a list of questions on that form and that will put you in the hopper if you would like to be a future Inspiring School Counselors podcast guest. And I’d ask for your best suggestions, your ideas, any tips you have, so that you can, and we can, share those with other school counselors around the country. You can find that form at inspiresuccess.org/podcast, inspiresuccess.org/podcast. Hey, thanks, Aimee. This was fun. Thanks, everyone, for listening, too.
Aimee:
Thanks, Matt.
Matt:
We appreciate it and we hope to hear from you soon.