Whether you’re still on summer break or have already kicked off a new school year, there’s one thing I think you need during this season: a curriculum map! While it’s very common for teachers to use this planning tool, I believe there are so many benefits for high school counselors to use it as well. In today’s episode, I’m sharing why you should create a curriculum map and how it sets you up for a successful school year.

One of the things I love about a curriculum map is that it helps you visually see the gaps in your program and ways you can meet those gaps to help better serve your counseling program and students. Even though the beginning of the school year is hectic, making this curriculum map at the start of the year allows you to have a vision and direction of where you’re headed. It also creates accountability for yourself and breaks down where you’re spending your time.

I know you have dreams and goals for your high school counseling program this school year. One of the best ways to achieve those dreams and goals is by creating a high school counseling curriculum map. This visual planning tool will be the ultimate game changer for you to have a successful school year. No matter where you are in the school year right now, make some time to create your own high school counseling curriculum map!

Resources Mentioned:

• Free Resource: How to Kick-Start Your Year as a High School Counselor https://counselorclique.com/privatepod
• Live Workshop: Power Hour Planning Party (Using a High School Counseling Curriculum Map to Plan Your School Year) https://counselorclique.com/planningparty
• Leave your review for School Counseling Conversations on Apple Podcasts

Connect with Lauren:

• Sign up for the free, 3-day prep for High School Counseling Job Interviews https://counselorclique.com/interviews
• Visit my TpT store https://counselorclique.com/shop
• Send me a DM on Instagram @counselorclique https://instagram.com/counselorclique
• Follow me on Facebook https://facebook.com/counselorclique
• Send me an email mailto:lauren@counselorclique.com
• Join the Clique Collaborative http://cliquecollab.com

Full show notes on website: https://counselorclique.com/episode141

Lauren Tingle 0:00

Hi. Welcome to this week's episode of High School Counseling Conversations. I'm your host, Lauren, and we are sitting down to listen to another episode. You are sitting down to listen. I'm sitting down to record another episode to gear us up for the start of the school year.

Lauren Tingle 0:16

So I don't know if you are already started, if you are anticipating students right now, or kind of where you are in the game. You might be right before students are coming back. If you're in those northern states who start back after Labor Day, if that's you, Godspeed, I wish you well. I hope you get a lot of rest before those students come barreling in your door. And maybe, if you are in the south like me, your students have been in school for almost a month now, which is crazy.

Lauren Tingle 0:43

So I know the beginning of the year is hectic, and we are going to be talking about how to set up a high school counseling curriculum map, because I want you to win at this year, and I am certain that a high school counseling curriculum map will be the thing that sets you up for success this year.

Lauren Tingle 1:00

It's going to be that planning tool that really helps you achieve some things, even before the year starts out, helps you set some goals. And we're really going to get into all the benefits of having a curriculum map set up to run your year off of.

Lauren Tingle 1:16

So before we get into that, I just wanted to wish you well for the start of the school year. I wanted to let you know that this episode, I hope, is going to be a great kickoff point for the start of the year.

Lauren Tingle 1:28

If you haven't listened to my podcast yet, to help you kick start the year, I have a three episode how to podcast that I think will get you really in the right mindset to start the school year. It's three episodes, and they're giving you really concrete, applicable tips if you are a high school counselor getting ready to start the year. I think it's perfect if you're a brand new high school counselor, but it's also awesome even if you are a returning veteran high school counselor. So I'll link that in the show notes, or I'll tell you too, it's counselorclique.com/privatepod, and that is how to kick start your year as a high school counselor. So head on over and get that if you want some more podcast listening stuff.

Lauren Tingle 2:06

Right now, we're gonna get into this week's episode to help you build a high school counseling curriculum map and really tell you how to do it and why you should do it so that you can find success this school year. Let's get into this week's episode.

Lauren Tingle 2:19

So I'm gonna lay out a few points here and tell you why I think that you should use a curriculum map to plan out your year. Now I think I'm going to tell you the why, and then you're going to leave saying, Okay, I'm ready to do this. That would be my hope that I can convince you that this is the right way to plan your year.

Lauren Tingle 3:18

So first things, first, a curriculum map, if you don't know what I'm even talking about, it's really a visual for your planning purposes. So the one that I have created that I use would be at the top. It has dates for the whole year, and you can scroll left to right and see those dates, and then top to bottom, I set up the grade levels that we're doing things with. So ninth grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade.

Lauren Tingle 3:44

I even have some things in there, like a section for bulletin boards. And I wish you could get a visual with me, but you know, that's really hard to do on a podcast, so you're just gonna have to envision it with me. This is called a Gantt chart. I had never heard of this before. I'm just not in the world of like organization and human organization and human development, and you know, that kind of stuff that, like someone from up above is handing down to all their employees. It's like we're just trying to be organized enough to make things work and make things function and not have everything catch on fire. Right?

Lauren Tingle 4:19

So I had never really heard of a Gantt chart before. I'm not organizationally minded like some of you probably are, and maybe you've heard of these before, but it's basically like this map that can scroll left and right and up and down, keep things organized and keep things really visual.

Lauren Tingle 4:34

So I think that the right planning map, which this is a good one, helps you identify gaps in your program, and then gets you thinking and moving in the right direction, so that you can set goals to better reach your students. When you have a visual map, you'll be able to see where those gaps are, like you don't do any small groups right now. You do only classroom lessons with ninth and 10th grade, and they drop off for 11th and 12th grade, and they don't get that done.

Lauren Tingle 5:01

You can look at your tier one, two and three programming, like, how are you reaching all students? How are you reaching some students? Like, picture that triangle, and then how many students are getting tier three interventions where it's not for everybody, but it's for some people? Are we reaching all students with tier one, two and three? If we're not how can we plug those in and make them happen?

Lauren Tingle 5:23

So with the right planning map, we can see those gaps, we can meet those gaps, and we can set goals to better our program and better serve our students.

Lauren Tingle 5:34

I love thinking about using a curriculum map for planning for the year, because though it feels daunting to plan for an entire year, using your energy to batch plan takes all of your brain cells and directs them at something that usually requires a lot of energy, but has you do that all at once.

Lauren Tingle 5:53

So I have very limited brain cells right now, I feel like, and if my brain cells are scattering, firing, trying to do 100 things at once, and stopping and starting things, it's like I never get them done. I've been joking lately that I feel like my executive functioning just is not working very well. And I mean, I'm joking, but maybe there's very well truth behind that. It's hard to finish a sentence. It's hard to finish a project. I don't know where I'm going when I end up in a room. Why am I here? Why am I here?

Lauren Tingle 6:26

I have a lot of energy, things going on in different directions, but if you can take your energy, your thoughts and your limited brain cells and put them all in one place at one time, you're not going to be going back and forth between different tasks. You're actually going to get some stuff done.

Lauren Tingle 6:42

Now, I know your time is very limited all year round, but it's also very limited at the very start of the school year. You've got schedule changes. You've got kids and parents coming to interrupt you. You've got teachers dropping in telling you that their classes are too big, or no one showed up for this class. I don't know. I can't even make up every scenario that you're dealing with right now as a high school counselor at the beginning of the school year.

Lauren Tingle 7:05

But I would encourage you to take a chunk of your day or a chunk of your evening and batch plan for as much as you can for this school year. You can always adapt or change what the plan is, especially after you've done a needs assessment. But there is something about sitting down and giving yourself a rough idea of what this month or this semester or this year will look like that is going to set you up for success.

Speaker 1 8:15

Once you have this down on paper or have it on like a digital calendar of sorts, you're gonna have a fire of accountability lit under you. It makes you admit out loud that you might actually have some dreams for your program, like the first ever career fair at your school, or a Mental Health Awareness Day that you've always dreamed of doing but you've never done before. Or maybe you want to have an alumni panel for your underclassmen.

Lauren Tingle 8:47

I don't know what those dreams are for you. You know what those dreams are for you. But let's admit them, let's put them down on some paper. Or when I say paper, I could say pen and paper, or I could say, like a digital version, which is really what I'm talking about. A curriculum map forces you to start somewhere.

Lauren Tingle 9:04

You might be pulling from nothing. Maybe you're brand new and you don't know what they did last year. Or maybe you have been here before, but it's just been so scattered, and you've pieced everything together at the last minute, flying by the seat of your pants. I get it. There are a lot of years like that.

Lauren Tingle 9:21

But at least when you sit down to map this out, you are picking a starting point. No one ever got to where they wanted to go by just standing still. I don't know. I'm sure I'm not the first person who said that. Maybe someone famous said that.

Lauren Tingle 9:35

You didn't just show up somewhere and the goal was met. You probably say the same thing to your students. They want to graduate, but they're not doing anything to get there. They tell you they want to be a YouTuber, but they don't even have a YouTube channel. They want to play professional sports, but they don't even play high school sports.

Lauren Tingle 9:51

Like we have to take steps to get to where we want to go if we want to have a program that's recognized by administrators or even just a role in the school that recognizes us as leaders and as people who care about students and know what we're doing. We have to care about students and know what we're doing. Let's put something down on paper and start taking steps in that direction.

My high school counseling curriculum map also lets you break down and filter job responsibilities for different counselors. So I have a tab on there that divides things up by different times of the year. So you know, when you're doing your job and you're like, Wait, what was I supposed to do this quarter? Or what am I doing this month? I give you sample tasks that might be what you're doing in your school, but you can edit those.

A lot of responsibilities can slip through the cracks, if we're only doing them once a year or once a quarter, and that can be really stressful. If you put that all down on a curriculum map, or have just some sort of tab to be able to filter responsibilities by times of the year or who is responsible for it, then this curriculum map is going to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. And isn't that the dream we want to go to bed, not worried that we're going to forget something that is important and necessary for our students.

So what else is in my high school counseling curriculum map? I told you it's got the responsibilities chart, I have the thing that's called a Gantt chart, so I kind of set that up for you visually. I love what it does. You can move it left and right, up and down. And I have kind of laid out what I think would be kind of an example of a curriculum map. But this is completely editable.

I also have it in like a templated version right on the next tab, where nothing is filled in, and you can fill it all on yourself. But I have it color coded by classroom lessons, small group lesson, SEL, college and career, kind of break it down by however you want. But I think having this visual of the curriculum map for the whole year helps you see, like I mentioned before, where those gaps are.

It also helps you notice if you're doing too much with ninth grade and not enough with 10th grade, because that happens sometimes. It helps you see where you're spreading yourself too thin, or maybe where you could add something else, because you don't have a lot of programming going on. When I scroll through that curriculum map, I love being able to picture where my energy level is at that time of the year, and what I have energy for and who I need to be focusing on.

And then once that map is done, the great thing is, you can share it with others. You can show this to your administrators or even teachers or parents who need to know what's going on, or who feel like they're at that level where they need to know what's going on and how we're getting to our goals. I especially think that's true with an administrator who's maybe over your department, or who just needs to know what you do as a school counselor.

I think it's more common for teachers to have that curriculum map, and it gives us just this level of validity to have something behind our name that shows, hey, we are doing just as much as teachers, if not more. What we're doing is valid. Look, I have a plan for the year.

And like I said, even if you map it out roughly, and then you take your sample needs assessment that I gave you, or a just a needs assessment that you're already doing in your building, you take those results and you kind of tweak it and fill that back in. You're not going to be starting over from square one after you have those needs assessments results.

So start with something. Get it down on paper. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, cool, cool, cool, a high school counseling curriculum map sounds awesome. Where do I start? How do I get this? Or how do I make this?

Well, this podcast episode is really pre-work. You have listened to the pre-work for the live workshop that I'm gonna host in a couple of weeks. I want this episode to set you up for success, just by telling you, hey, you can do a curriculum map. I want you to listen to this and say, I want to make a curriculum map for my program, and I want a roadmap for my year. I want to move the needle in my school counseling program and be a little more organized, a little more intentional about what I'm doing for students.

So if you hear all of this and you are thinking, hey, give me that planning map. Well, boy, do I have an annual curriculum map for you. In similar style of my PD membership, the Clique Collaborative, I don't just want to give you the fishing pole to fish. I want to teach you how to fish.

So what if we sat down together for one hour and worked on this planning map together? I'm thinking a live workshop that I'm going to call the Power Hour planning Party. Because, you know, it's going to be fun. We're going to have live raffles and just incentives for you joining us live. I want you to be able to ask your questions, troubleshoot your roadblocks, fill in your curriculum map. I also want to give you some pre work ahead of time to help you be a little more effective and have that time go a little more smoothly than if you just showed up with nothing in your hands.

So as soon as you sign up for this live, paid workshop, you're going to get a sample editable needs assessment and some pre work if you want to do that ahead of time. Now, you don't have to, but I'm going to give you the resources to do a little bit of planning before you get there, so you can hit the ground running when we show up live.

We'll take one hour and we'll chart out a plan for the year. Won't that feel good? Everyone's is going to be a little bit different from their neighbors, but it'll be nice to get something down on paper and then run yours by other people. Ask what they're doing, take their suggestions and get their feedback. So will you join me for the Power Hour Planning Party? Go to counselorclique.com/planningparty and check it out. It costs $37 and it'll be held live so that we can get stuff done.

So as soon as you say I'm in, you'll automatically get your confirmation email with the highly coveted editable annual curriculum map and the sample editable needs assessment. Go to counselorclique.com/planningparty and sign up to join us live for an hour on Sunday, September 8 in the evening, 8pm Eastern Standard Time. We'll go for one hour and it'll be recorded in case something comes up for you.

But I wholeheartedly encourage you to come live so you can work on it and get the results. You'll have it done by the time that the hour is over. Go to counselorclique.com/planningparty, sign up for the live, paid workshop and automatically get that curriculum map and that editable needs sssessment right to your inbox, and then you'll get your next steps. I can't wait to see you there.