As the school year wraps up and summer break draws near, it’s tempting to mentally check out and leave everything behind. But before you do, there are a few key steps you can take that will save you headaches next fall and make your summer more peaceful! In this episode, I guide you through three simple yet powerful end-of-year tasks to help you wrap things up thoughtfully and set yourself and your students up for success.

You’ll learn how to capture important data and reflections while they’re still fresh, ensure students who need extra support have access to summer resources, and dream big about your summer, whether that means professional growth or well-deserved relaxation. If you want to step into summer with a clear plan and a lighter load next year, this episode is for you. Don’t forget to check out the resources I mention to take action right away and start the new school year stress-free!

Resources Mentioned:

• Resource: End of Year Bundle
• Free Resource: 3-Day Interview Video Challenge
• Podcast: Episode 168, You’ve Collected Data All Year - Here’s What to Do With It Now
• Leave your review for High 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/episode169

Hi, my friends. If you are listening to this, I'm

venturing that you are either at the end of your school year, you

have made it across the finish line, your students have

graduated, or you are this close to getting there. Like, you can

see it, you can taste it, it's about to happen for you. I know

we are all barely hanging on through the end of the school

year, whether that is in your work life or also add in

personal life, just this time of year ends up getting crazy. It's

like the craziness without the holidays, but all the to do

lists, et cetera. So let's talk about how we're going to wrap up

the end of the year, how we're going to check out, but the

things that we need to do before we officially get out for the

end of the year.

And then if you still have some time left in the school year and

If at this point, you are still interviewing for jobs, like you

are trying to make a transition from elementary or middle to

high school, you're in a high school and you're trying to move

to a different high school, or maybe you're an intern and

you're hoping to get a job, I want to make sure that you get

these free interview videos that will give you tips and

strategies for interviewing for your jobs. I can't promise that

you're actually going to get the job from doing it, but a lot of

people have. So go to counselorclique.com/interviews

to get those videos sent to your email inbox to help you prep for

your job if you are still hoping to nail an interview and get

that dream job.

you are trying to get together some end of year resources, I

have an end of year bundle that I've put together with some of

my favorite resources as you're wrapping up this school year. It

has things like data collection and just some things you can do

in classrooms and individual lessons and counseling sessions

with students. So I'd encourage you to check that out. I will

link that in the show notes. If you are still feeling like you

need to have some counseling tools in your back pocket, I've

got you covered there. Let's go ahead and get into the three

tasks that you're going to do before you check out for the

year.

You you got into this profession to make a difference in your

students' lives, but you're spread thin by all of the things

that keep getting added to your to do list. I can't create more

hours in the day, but I can invite you into my counselor

clique, where you'll finally catch your breath. Come with me

as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that'll

help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your

students. I'm Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype

girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program

and remind you of how much you love your job.

First and foremost, I want you to collect and write down any

notes that you just think that you're going to remember,

because we all have this ideal that we will remember everything

we set out to. We will know that when that student's name pops

up, we're going to remember that they are doing algebra two and

credit recovery over the summer, and if they don't complete it,

they're going to be retained in 10th grade. Okay, I think I'm

gonna remember that because it's so specific, because I know that

student so well. We sat and talked about grades every week

in my office, but if I don't write down the specifics, I

might not remember where we left off with this conversation, or

what my responsibility was gonna be when that grade came back in

or it didn't, or what their plan was going to be when they

actually didn't finish the class.

So write down all the information that you think

you're going to need, like, who are your failures at the end of

the year, and what that plan is for each of those individual

students. If it's credit recovery, if it's some sort of

summer school, if they are trying to finish something in

the first week of summer and average with their grade, I

don't know. I'm sure there is something unique that your

district does, that your school does, that might be different

depending on where you are or what grade level you work with.

So write those things down so that when you get a random

parent phone call in the middle of the summer or the craziness

of the school year starts, you can quickly just trigger that

memory with the notes that you have.

If you have any weird scheduling or transcript stuff, let's also

write down these type of notes. So if, you know, you're in the

middle of this master schedule, getting everybody's schedules

just right, but there are things you know that are coming that

you're going to have to make big changes with, like a teacher is

going to change and it's gonna push all these, you know, the

ones that I'm talking about, like, where you know that this

special ed class is gonna be dissolved, and you're gonna have

to find new things. Like, go ahead and just like dog ear

those pages. Jot your notes down. Print out any of the

emails from admin that say, like, Band One is now, you know,

marching band, and it's whatever those prerequisites are.

And then transcript stuff. If you have students who are

graduating that need certain transcripts sent places, or you

have already sent those places, I kind of talked about this in a

senior episode before, but get your systems in place for your

senior transcripts and where they're going. If you have some

final grades for your other students that will be printed on

their final transcripts at the end of the year, make sure that

if there is just something weird about it, like that they are

failing due to attendance, or you are waiting on a last minute

grade to get this one up to passing, and it's gonna make or

break them being retained or being promoted, like those kinds

of tiny details are all very important. They're the ones that

you don't wanna forget what the backstory was, but the parent

wasn't involved, so the parent never sent you an email, like

you have no paper trail other than the notes that you write

down.

So pick where you're gonna keep your notes written down for your

failures and their plans, any weird scheduling things, any

weird transcript stuff.

If you still have emails that are like ongoing conversations

where the loops haven't been closed yet, I want you to either

flag those, put them in a special folder, print them off,

and file them in the student's folder that you keep the extra

special printed stuff in. Like, you know, the ones that are

still continuing on into the summer, the loops that you wish

you could close, that you just haven't closed yet. Go ahead and

print those out, or jot some notes on there so that you don't

forget where you left off with those conversations.

A thing that I want you to remember to write down,

reference last week's episode if you need help with this, write

down some quick data points that you'll want to track year over

year, or you'll want to be able to reference when the new school

year starts. So I'm talking about doing the things that will

serve your future self, do those right now. Because I know when I

would get to the end of the year, I don't have that readily

available in my brain of what the promotion or retention rate

was at the end of last year. I do not know how many students

fail their classes due to attendance. Like the things that

you might want to have some new initiatives for or set some new

smart goals off of, it is so much easier to do it when it's

still fresh in your mind at the end of the year, versus going

back and digging for that information when August rolls

around and you have 1,000,001 other things to do.

If you're wondering what sorts of data points you could

collect, head back to last week's episode, the one that

comes right before this, and I'll also link it in the show

notes, but that is a great data episode for the end of the year.

Okay, we've already talked about the things that you're going to

write down, any notes that you're going to collect, because

let's be real, you're not going to always remember them. Now,

let's talk about relationally. I want you to tie up any loose

ends you have with your students. If you have high

flyers and you're still connected to them now, because

they haven't left your school building yet, I want you to have

a game plan for them. Connect with them, talk to them about

the summer resources they might need.

So whether that is summer school, and you need to follow

up and make sure A, they're registered, B, they know how to

access their account if it's online, or where to go if it's

in person, and C, why it's important and get them some

motivation going to get that completed. I want you to touch

base with them before they leave for the summer. They need to

know how important whatever the work is that's in front of them,

so that they follow through. If they're your high flyers, you

probably know that maybe they're not the most accountable to

actually finishing work. And so every touch point that you can

have all the way till you don't see them anymore, is valuable in

your book.

If you have students who are going to need some extra mental

health resources over the summer, don't let that slip by

before they walk out of your school building. Give them the

things that they're going to need. Do they need to follow up

with a counselor outside of school? Are they doing some sort

of, okay, I'm going to say mental health summer camp. That

sounds maybe weird, but in our school, our LPC used to hold.

I'm gonna put it in air quotes, summer camps, for her students

on her caseload. Don't know if this is common everywhere else,

but it was really cool. But I would have to remind students,

hey, when Miss Jera calls you over the summer to invite you to

her summer camp, make sure you answer. Text her back, make sure

you go. It's gonna be really fun. She would offer these

activities, but then have some coping skills and therapy mixed

into whatever they were doing. It was a really valuable time

for those students, so I always wanted to make sure I was just

helping facilitate that connection point before they

left for the summer.

And then if you have students who maybe have some basic needs

that need to be met over the summer, if you've had students

who have been homeless throughout the year, make sure

they have the contact information of the shelters or

the homeless liaison. Yes, you will probably be working some

over the summer, but you might not be available whenever they

need you. So if they can know where they can access food banks

or just emergency resources that they might need, I think you

will sleep better at night knowing that your students are

connected. It's so hard to go away for the summer knowing that

you have these high flyer students with a lot of needs,

and you can easily spend your summer worrying about them or

hoping that they have everything that they need when they're not

connected at school.

Lastly, I want you to dream big about your summer. What are your

big hopes and dreams for this summer? And there is no right or

wrong answer here. I just want you to take a second to do this

before you completely check out for the school year. Do you want

to revamp a part of your program? Jot some notes down. Do

some daydreaming. Maybe chat over lunch with your team about

it just as you exit the year, and it's all still fresh on your

mind.

So if you did one small group right here as you ended the

school year and it went well, talk about that, remind each

other and hype each other up like we want to do this again

next year. Or maybe when you see some of those data points that

you wrote down as you got to the end of the year, you're dreaming

big for next year about something that you can see going

really well in your school to meet a need based on the data

that you pulled and just some of the things that you observed as

you got to the end of the school year.

Is reading a book on your list this summer? Now, of course, it

could just be, you know, the newest fantasy novel or

something, but maybe you want to read a PD book this summer, and

you challenge yourself to put one on your to be read list, and

you actually do it. What is that for you? I am finally going to

finish The Anxious Generation here pretty soon. I've been

listening slowly but surely on audiobook, and I've loved every

second of it, so that's free to listen to on Spotify if you have

Spotify, but I'd highly recommend that or some other PD

book that you've seen floating around. Don't forget that you

can pop in some air pods and listen to that after you listen

to your weekly episode of High School Counseling Conversations.

As you're going into the summer, maybe have big dreams of

onboarding a new team member, or you've already signed up to take

on an intern for next school year. You're probably already

thinking about what that's going to look like as they come into

your office, as they get situated, and what you're going

to kind of need to do to make sure that they have a great

experience in your school counseling office and with your

school counseling team. So if there are a couple little bullet

points that you want to jot down for that, or just dream about

what that might look like, now is the time to think about that.

And maybe your big dreams for the summer are just relaxing,

laying by the pool, thinking nothing about high school

counseling, and that is totally fine. I am here to give you

permission to say you can check out at the end of this school

year and not think about school for the entire summer. Depending

on the season that you find yourself in and the level of

stress or not stress that you find yourself in, you might have

different goals for the summer, and that is okay. It's okay for

that to change every summer, or it's okay for every summer for

you just to say, I want to check out. I don't want to be

responsible for anybody else, and I am not going to do

schoolwork over the summer, if I can help it.

I hope thinking about these three big things that you're

going to do before you check out for the year is exciting and

encouraging, because you have either already made it, or you

are so close to making it. So write down any notes that you

need to remember, tie up any loose ends with your students,

and dream your big dreams for the summer, and we will talk

more this summer.

Remember, if you're still interviewing and you need some

help with those interviews, counselorclique.com/interviews

is going to get you those free videos that are going to help

you through the interview process. And I'm going to link

some end of year resources in the show notes if you are still

looking for some resources for your high school counseling

program that'll help you tie up the end of the year. Enjoy.

Thanks for listening to today's episode of High School

Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today

can be found in the show notes and also at

counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you

listen to your podcasts, so that you never miss a new episode.

Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me

a DM @counselorclique, that's C, L, I, Q, U, E. I'll see you next

week.