Does your school have an advisory program? A successful advisory program includes social-emotional learning (SEL) done by both classroom teachers and school counselors. It creates a supportive environment, fosters connections between students and educators, and addresses various topics including bullying, relationship building, and college preparation. 

Our guest, Leslie Cuprill is a licensed clinical social worker from Brooklyn, who has extensive experience working with diverse populations of students. In our conversation today, we will discuss how to create an engaging advisory program that promotes social-emotional learning (SEL) to help students thrive in their academic and personal lives. 

You can hear more from Leslie at The Summer Counselor Conference where she will be presenting a session on engaging students in groups, advisory, and SEL. 

Topics Covered:

• The many benefits of advisory programs; including improved attendance, engagement, graduation rates, and more.
• Why it is important for school counselors to support classroom teachers with training to effectively facilitate advisory sessions and connect with students. 
• The best ways for integrating advisory into the regular school day in order to increase student engagement and accountability.
• Engaging students by using surveys to gather student preferences and interests and involving them in creating ground rules for advisory sessions. 
• Why it is essential to understand the diverse cultural backgrounds of students when designing advisory content. 
• Tips on how to overcome teacher resistance and create a successful advisory program.

Connect with Leslie: 

• Email: Leslie.informeddeisions@gmail.com
• Informed Decisions Newsletter
• Informed Decisions Blog
• Advisory and SEL Programs And Activities Facebook Group
• Informed Decisions Instagram
• Informed Decisions TpT Store
• Informed Decisions on Boom Learning

Resources:

• Advisory and SEL Programs that Fail in the School System
• What Would You Like to Discuss Checklist 
• Summer Counselor Conference
• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts
• Carol's website
• TPT store

Questions about the conference or anything you heard on this episode? 

Send me an email: carol@counselingessentials.org

Mentioned in this episode:

Perks Membership

Carol: You're listening to the Counselor Chat Podcast, a show for school counselors looking for easy to implement strategies, how to tips, collaboration, and a little spark of joy. I'm Carol Miller, your host. I'm a full time school counselor and the face behind counseling essentials. I'm all about creating simplified systems, data driven practices, and using creative approaches to engage age students. If you're looking for a little inspiration to help you make a big impact on student growth and success, you're in the right place, because we're better together. Ready to chat? Let's dive in.

Carol: Hey, counselors.

Carol: Welcome back to Counselor Chat. It's Carol, your host, and I am going to be joined on the podcast today by Leslie Caprell. Leslie is a social worker who is also the face behind informed decisions if you follow her on TPT or Facebook or Instagram. And Leslie is going to be talking with us today about how we can incorporate diversity into our groups, but we also dive into the world of advisory and how we can really make the most of an advisory program and spark.

Carol: That up a bit.

Carol: Before we dive in, though, I just want to share a little review that I received for the podcast from Alison Miller 107, and Allison titles it First Year School Counselor, and she writes, as a first year school counselor, I could not thank Carol enough for these. She is so knowledgeable. I like to listen to these while doing my cardio at the gym. She is amazing, and I would recommend her resources and podcasts to anyone. Allison, thank you so much for that review.

Carol: I really love it.

Carol: And I also love that you're a Miller, too.

Carol: Not that we're related, but I don't.

Carol: Know, maybe in some distance place we are.

Carol: But thank you for that lovely review.

Carol: It really warms my heart if you are listening, if you could also leave.

Carol: A review that really means so much.

Carol: It helps other counselors like Alison and.

Carol: You and people that haven't really discovered.

Carol: The podcast yet to find us and.

Carol: To really get this information so that hopefully they can use what they learn here from our interviews with other counselors.

Carol: And incorporate it into their own counseling program.

Carol: So your reviews really mean a lot, but that's enough about that.

Carol: I think it's time to really just dive in. So here we go.

Carol: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Counselor Chat podcast. I'm so excited that you're here with me today, and we have a special guest on the podcast today. I'm here with Leslie Caprell, and Leslie is a licensed clinical social worker from Brooklyn, and she has been working with core and gang involved youth, LGBTQIA, plus students, clean mothers, and special need populations. Leslie is also the face behind informed decisions on TPT, Facebook, and Instagram, and Leslie is committed to creating multicultural resources to help educators really reach all students and provide equitable opportunities for all. So, Leslie, welcome to the podcast.

Leslie: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Carol: So I was hoping that as we begin, that you could tell all our listeners a little bit more about yourself and maybe about your role.

Leslie: So I have been working with teens for many years. I really love putting together programs for advisory and SEL, and I really enjoy creating lesson plans that are engaging for teens to make it super easy for teachers and counselors to implement them in their classroom so they can form those connections with students. I'm currently work with a bunch of different age ranges, still doing counseling and also working on my own company Informed Decisions.

Carol: Awesome. Well, we are so excited that you are here today. So I know this summer that you're one of our presenters at our summer counselor conference. And your session for our listeners is all about engaging your students in groups, advisory and sell. And when I think about advisory programs, I really think of you as like the guru of all things advisory, because you seem to really have your hand in it. I know that you've been doing it for a while and you have so much insight over about advisory.

Leslie: Well, thank you. That's kind of exciting that I'm a guru.

Carol: I think you are. I don't know. You're always talking about advisory, and I think if anybody wants to know about it, I'm going to send them your way, because I think you've been doing it for a really long time and you know all about it.

Leslie: I have. I don't like to say how long it's been, though. I like to keep that kind of a secret.

Carol: It's been a while. I was hoping that today you could maybe tell people a little bit about advisory, what an advisory program is, because I think maybe some of our newer counselors, they might not even know what that means. And then maybe you can tell them a tip or two about running them. And I definitely want to hear some strategies how we can get kids engaged. So I'm going to turn it all over to you, and you can share with us everything.

Leslie: So I guess I like to make it simple, even though it's so complicated when we're doing counseling, that there's so many layers. But the easiest way to say does that the advisory program is actually SEL, but both teachers and counselors do it. So we end up taking two roles, right? We either take the role where we're facilitating it, or we're developing it and training the teachers on how to do it. So there are some slight differences to an advisory, and I know it's called different Things in different parts of the country. I've had people tell me, we call it this or we call it something else, but we have a similar program. But the thing that makes it a little different for us, too, is how we write up activities for counseling. If we do push ins or if we do guidance lessons versus where we're doing it in a class. So if you have the optimal advisory, it would be like a group between twelve to 15, but I've definitely done up to 30, which is a little more challenging for that. If you end up getting a group of 30, break everything down into smaller groups and still facilitate your activities, that way would be the best thing that I can say to do that for. That where it comes to where the difference is too, when you're writing it up, it's a little more in detail than an activity that we would write up, but it's a lot less detailed than the teacher would need for them to write up their lesson planned. They have all these other things that don't really need to be included when we're talking about social emotional skills. So it could be anything from bullying to talking about college or facilitating relationships. Anything that is along that spectrum of things that we would definitely do for some of the activities and lesson plans.

Carol: That we would have. Now, I have a question just because it just popped into my head, and I know way back in the day when I was working in middle school, when I first started in the middle school, we had an advisory period, which was like kind of in the morning. And I'm just wondering, do you think most schools from your experience that have advisories tend to be like middle and high schools, or do you ever see that in the younger grades?

Leslie: It doesn't mean they don't exist. I've never seen it in elementary, but my focus has always been middle and high school. So a lot of fantastic programs in the middle and high school, and I've seen them done so many different ways. One of the schools I was in did an advisory where the entire Wednesday, the kids went to school from until about noon, and they just did advisory all Wednesday and then the rest of the day the teachers did professional development trainings. I've also seen it a lot with the mornings and the thing. I have mixed feelings about the morning ones because I feel like if it's done first thing in the morning, sometimes it ends up being like a home room where they're checking in for attendance more and kids kind of blow it off. My preference, if it could optimally be one way, is I would have it worked into the school day so they're more apt to go. And I also would prefer it to be graded so they feel accountable. So there are always students that are not going to participate regardless, but that has bigger buy in, I think, where it's taken more seriously.

Carol: Okay. When I look back at my own experiences of having the advisory, we did it first thing in the morning, and it was like for 20 minutes. And sometimes it did feel like kind of an extended homeroom period. And we're always looking for activities, but sometimes having to shorten them for that length of time was kind of challenging.

Leslie: And it is challenging because by the time you get the students and they're settled and then you introduce the activity and you finally start getting to talk about it, your time is done. It's kind of sometimes how I always felt about the lunch when we only had it for like 30 minutes. By the time you get the kids and you grab them for lunch and you have it in the middle of the day and you get started and it's over, I don't feel like you have as much time for and I know you're big with lunch bunch groups, though. I don't feel like the morning you get that time with them to really discuss and reflect on the activity that you do so it ends up being smaller bits of information.

Carol: I know one of our nearby schools, when I was in the middle school, they had their advisory period as like a part of us. It was a study hall, but all kids had to go to it, so it was 43 minutes and it was a scheduled part in the day. They only had it once a week, but every kid had a study hall four days a week, and then one day was their advisory. And I always thought that was like, awesome. I wish that our school would have done it that way as well. But as you said, like, the one school that you were talking about where they did it every Wednesday for like half a day, that's a really neat concept. I would love that.

Leslie: I'm definitely going to send a couple of links for listeners so they can have but I definitely have an advisories that fail blog post. As long as they did the one day that was advisory, that's great. But I've also seen a lot of schools change the advisory period for the when they're not properly trained to facilitate, turn it into study hall. And I feel like it loses all that excitement of what students can learn.

Carol: Okay. All right, so great. I will be looking for that link and I'll make sure that I include it because I want to read that too. Very cool. Do you have maybe a tip for running a really great advisory or a strategy to really get our kids engaged?

Leslie: I mean, I feel like it's a lot of skills that councils already have, those skills that they use to connect with students to begin with. Right. So one of the things that I really love to do is have them be a part of what they're learning, so we have a lot more flexibility in advisory. Unless your school is beyond structured, there isn't the state standard, so you have more flexibility in what they're learning so you can actually ask them what they want to learn. So I usually pass out a survey, have them mark off what they want to learn, and kind of constructure it that way. Most of the time you already have the advisory laid out, but it also gives them input. You're going to talk about all the stuff that you give them on the checklist anyway, but it makes them feel like they're part of what they're learning. When do they have that opportunity? In math, they walk into class and they already have whatever algebra or whatever they're learning for the year is already set. They don't get to say, hey, I really want to learn this.

Carol: I love the idea of a survey, too. That's awesome.

Leslie: So I also provide your listeners with a link for that so they can use that. And I've just developed it also that it's digital. I was very excited about that because I've been using Hard Copy for years and then just tallying it up for myself. But it gives you in this way if students are like, Well, I'm not really into that. Well, you said this is what you wanted to learn. I took all the information. So it gives another part of the buy in for students. Another thing that I also really encourage doing is having them create their own ground rules. Like have them come up with the ground rules and have them say what they want because they hold each other accountable for the rules. And they're so used to saying the same rules over and over again that they've learned since kindergarten that they're going to give the same things that we expect anyway with one person speaks at a time, allowing different things, but it gives you a really good basis. Those two things are in every single group, have it be advisory or anything else. I've always done that. And it just gives so much more buy in for students because they've been allowed to help create the environment themselves.

Carol: Right? I think that's so true. When kids think that their voice is being heard that they can come up with some of the rules themselves, even though they're what we really want them to have anyway, the buy in is so much more. All right, well, I have one more question for you because as I'm listening so you said you did a survey and then the kids create their own ground rules. So it really sounds like that what you're doing in your advisory might be different than the advisory that's down the hall with another teacher and maybe like a social worker or a school counselor versus another one on the other end of the building that's doing something different. Is that right?

Leslie: Well, if you have the program implemented effectively, you've had all your teachers trained and how to facilitate and give them the tips ahead of time. And that's one thing that I really like to stress because there is a lot of pushback from teachers and other staff that through my experience, and I can't say everybody through my experience, there tends to be a pattern of educators that are super excited about it and there tends to be educators that are not. And having professional development time where you're actually teaching them exactly what they need to know, providing them lesson plans, telling them how they can structure it, and almost providing them the information they need makes it really helpful. So it allows for maybe different lesson plans on different days and not everybody's doing the same thing, but pretty much all the students should be getting the same information. And a huge part of it is really to forming those connections because once they have the connection with the person that's facilitating the advisory, that's where you get your students engaged and excited about learning.

Carol: Connections are so important and that is truly what drives not only the engagement on the students behalf, but the engagement on the teacher's participation as well. So if they feel like they're not connected with the students, and I'm just thinking about teachers that I've worked with in the past, if they don't feel connected with their classroom, they aren't motivated to be there. They're like, it's awful. You go in there and you could just feel the energy because there isn't any. That connection is so important.

Leslie: It allows the students. And that's what I think is so great about an advisory program. It helps them feel connected to the teachers, have more connection to the school itself, they feel more engaged in learning. And the results of all the statistics that are out there say that it helps raise attendance and engagement and graduation and as a result of all of the implementation. But again, that comes back to isn't the program implemented effectively? Are they making it solely a study hall or are they only doing that 20 minutes in the morning? Or are they doing something that's really connecting to the students and really engaging them in the school? So it's a culture that really needs to come from the top down and there are always going to be people that are pushed back. But if you're the one that's putting together the program in the school, it becomes the responsibility to try to overcome some of the objections so that we can get staff involved.

Carol: In your advisories that you've run, do you do a combination of hands on activities or do you do a lot of fishbowl type discussions or what do you think is more of your go to style or strategy style?

Leslie: I guess my go to style is just interactive. I'm not the hugest fan of just handing out worksheets, even though some of my students would have really loved that. I was actually talking about this earlier, that I had an advisory one year set up where they had the most difficult students in the advisory and then they ended up switching it and giving me the students that were straight a students that really like to work independently, so they weren't the biggest fans. The fact that I made everything group work, like, eventually at jobs, you're going to have to work with other people, so we need to really learn this skill. So the most of my I have to say my go to and my style is definitely activity based. I like to do the activity first and then kind of debrief with them. Well, why do you think we did this? What do you think this activity is about? And really have them reflect on what we're doing and how it connects to them personally and how it's going to affect them in their everyday lives.

Carol: I love that. I am such a big fan of the hands on activities and then the whole, like, what do we just do? And then, what does it mean? And now how would you use this in your future? So I love that. All right, Leslie, is there anything else that you can think of that you'd like to share with everyone today?

Leslie: I mean, just a little bit, because we started talking about having a phone from the conference. But the other thing, too, is definitely knowing the population of your students. So that will be what my session essentially is about for the conference, but really knowing the different backgrounds and ethnicities and cultures of your students, because that's going to be really important in connecting with them and creating your lesson plans and how you engage with them. I know when I first started, and I know some people made up this story, but it definitely was, we want you to create this program. We want you to create a social emotional learning program. And I asked them where the curriculum was, and of course, they said, we don't have any, so create it yourself. And the examples that I kept finding in books were, like, Susie was a cheerleader and Bobby's on the football team, and our students didn't have a football team. We didn't have any extracurricular activities that students went to. They didn't connect with that. That was in an urban area. They used to go up to the park for PE. There wasn't even a space for them to have it indoors, so there was no connection that our students had. So I ended up that's kind of how I got started in this, was starting to create the activities that reflected the students and their cultural backgrounds and what they could connect to in their everyday lives and what their experiences were.

Carol: Right. And that is really important consideration to do. I think for any counselor out there who's listening to this and is thinking, I'm responsible for writing lesson plans for my students and for my school, I really think knowing the backgrounds and knowing what their lived experiences are, are really important. I can remember doing it was a second step lesson, actually, and it was about something that had to do with the swimming pool. It was like one of their safety lessons. And I just kept thinking our kids, because I was working, I'm in an inner city school and I'm like, our kids don't have swimming pools. They're not going to go to their neighbor's house and go swimming. That's just not something that's feasible. If they are swimming, it's maybe at the Y or maybe they're going to the pool in the park, but it's definitely not their own, and they're not just going to be jumping over the fence to go swimming. So I think it's so important to think about that. And I know the swimming is like a small, minor thing, but these are experiences that we have to think about what are our kids lives like?

Leslie: But it's not even that minor because if you use that example right, your students would push back and say, well, we don't swim, so how is this helpful for us?

Carol: That's why it's important, even when you have a canned program, like a second step to go through it really carefully and critically and with different lenses.

Leslie: Well, that's also too, when I sometimes read comments and feedback from people, I'm always curious, too, that you really should be going. Whatever you purchase, even if it seems like the perfect fit, you still want to go through it before you facilitate it to make sure that it connects to exactly what you need for your population.

Carol: And it's funny because I think before I really was involved in TPT, I'll admit I was guilty of not always thinking about the experiences that my kids were having. But now I even have to think more globally when I'm putting together lessons and things for TPT, because I've had people say, I live in Florida and it doesn't snow. I'm like, oh, yeah. So maybe that wasn't a good example in whatever discussion card I was putting together, but it's so important to really think a little bit more, be more open minded as to what experiences are out there.

Leslie: But see, I look at it as the way, but maybe one of the people that purchased your resource in New Hampshire does. I definitely have snow or Canada. So then for me, I would be looking at it, okay, we live in Florida, so that's not the right fit for us for this card. We'll leave that one out of the discussion. That's why I'm saying, like, taking a look to make sure it meets the needs of your population because it's really hard to create for an entire country, if not international folks as well who purchase resources from TPT, it makes it really hard. So that's why I feel like you have to look through things so that it is appropriate for your own population.

Carol: Exactly. I hope that this dialogue becomes a little bit of an eye opener for them when they're sitting down and they're looking at curriculum or reviewing it or buying it or using it or creating their own. This is just an important discussion to have.

Leslie: Well, thank you for having me so that we can have it.

Carol: Yeah, and I look so forward to your session. I really can't wait. And so, once again, people, if you want to hear Leslie talk a little bit more all about advisory, engaging students and all that kind of stuff, you really want to come to our Summer Counselor conference? There's still time to get your tickets, and we go live. Well, the conference opens up August 3, but the conference really starts August 4, so I know I can't wait. All right, well, Leslie, once again, thank you so much. And for everyone who's out there, I will be dropping some links that Leslie has for us in the Show Notes. And if you want to connect with Leslie leslie, do you want to tell them before you leave how our people can connect with you?

Leslie: Sure. I'm on instagram at inform decisions and Facebook. There's actually a Facebook advisory group, too, that's for free for tips and resources, and I can provide my email as well, if there are any questions that people want to follow up with.

Carol: And I will make sure that I have all those links, and I will put them all in the Show Notes. So if you're interested and you forget what we just said, please check the Show Notes. Anyway, people, thank you for joining us. Until next time we chat, have a great week.

Leslie: Bye.

Carol: Thanks for listening to today's episode of Counselor Chat. All of the links I talked about can be found in the Show Notes and@counselingsentials.org Podcast. Be sure to hit, follow, or subscribe on your favorite podcast podcast player. And if you would be so kind.

Carol: To leave a review, I'd really appreciate it. Want to connect?

Carol: Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at counseling essentials. Until next time. Can't wait till we chat. Bye for now.