After graduation, students are eager to jump into the next chapter of their lives, but sometimes things fall through the cracks. Summer melt is real, and it can make the transition to the next chapter way harder than it needs to be. In this episode, I’m breaking down what summer melt is, why it happens, and, most importantly, what we can do to help students stay on track. It's all about finding solutions and making sure our students have the support they need when they need it the most!

We’ll talk about the reasons why students sometimes lose momentum after graduation and how that can impact their future plans. I’ll share six main ideas for how school counselors can help transition seniors smoothly into their post-graduation plans. From simple check-ins to providing extra resources, we’ve got a lot of ways to step in and help bridge the gap between graduation and the fall semester. We’ve got this! Let’s make sure your students don’t just drift away over the summer but move confidently into whatever comes next.

Resources Mentioned:

• Resource: Transition to College Presentation 
• Resource: Life After High School Classroom Lesson
• Podcast: Episode 140, Highs and Lows of Working with Seniors with Brittany Slagle
• Podcast: Episode 120, Accepting the Reality That Some Seniors Might Not Graduate
• Podcast: Episode 68, 4 Ways to Repurpose Student Pictures to Celebrate Your Seniors
• 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/episode162

Mentioned in this episode:

Learn 3 powerful tips for interviewing for high school counseling jobs with confidence through this video series: https://counselorclique.com/interviews/

Lauren 0:00

Hi, my friends. I have a lot of episodes about working specifically with seniors, but I wanted to sprinkle in a few more as we're nearing the end of the semester. I'll link all those past senior episodes or other things I think you may find helpful for working with your 12th grade students as you get to the end and as you see graduation on the horizon. I think those will be helpful for you. Maybe if you're in over your head right now, I wanted to give you a few tangible ideas of some things you could do right now or that you could try with your seniors if you want to inspire them to follow through on their goals after graduation and avoid the summer melt.

Lauren 0:37

If you haven't heard that term before, summer melt is just when your seniors plan to attend college and then they don't. And maybe that's because of financial issues, anxiety, lack of support, a general lack of follow through, it could be a myriad of reasons. I also want to take the liberty to open up this term summer melt to not just college plans, but whatever the plans are. I think, it's my podcast, so I can do what I want, right? For the sake of the conversation, I'm going to be thinking like this summer melt is going to include balking on any plans, whether it's four year college, local tech school, basic training for the military, a gap year program, an apprenticeship, you know, name whatever is on the list that your student is doing next. If they bail on their next steps, we're just going to go ahead and call that a summer melt.

Lauren 1:25

School counselors can have a huge impact on deterring summer melt for students. Think about all of the transitions you've helped your students with so far, these ones that are about to walk across the stage. You know their stories, it's like the sweetest part of getting to be involved in their graduation. You know how hard they had to work just to get across that stage, or you know what they've been through as you have gotten to know them and have heard the things that they have gone through since kindergarten to get to this point. And you're so proud of them. You are so excited for them to finally get that diploma in their hand.

Lauren 1:59

I'm not asking you to go with them to college. I just want you to pass them off smoothly and help them make that transition as successful as possible.

Lauren 2:12

You got into this profession to make a difference in your students' lives, but you're spread thin by all 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.

Lauren 2:45

So let's talk about avoiding the summer melt. What can you do while you still have some time with them to help ease the transition into whatever they do next? I've got a couple ideas for you, so let's talk through them. I would say you're probably not going to do all of them. Maybe hear one of them and say, that's an idea I could try.

Lauren 3:04

So first, let's teach them how to not miss deadlines. Yes, this would be nice if they've already mastered it by this point, but if they haven't, it is not too late to work on this skill. I'm talking about help them develop a calendar. This could be a classroom lesson on time management or organization. And yes, of course it would have been better if they mastered this back in ninth grade. But I don't think talking about this even this late in the game is a topic that will be lost on them. It's still super applicable.

Lauren 3:33

So whether that is digital or a paper calendar or using their Google classroom calendar as they are still in the swing of things with their school accounts. This can be something that you do in a classroom setting or in a smaller small group, like a Lunch and Learn series. You probably already find yourself doing this with individual students, and maybe that's the best way to do it, those ones who just need help keeping up and keeping things together. But if you find that you're having a lot of these conversations, maybe you can open it up to some smaller groups during like a lunchtime conversation.

Lauren 4:09

I just think it's a much needed skill that can get overlooked or undervalued, and it's something that they are going to take with them no matter what they're doing in their next season. You could even put their orientation date or the date they start that new job on the calendar and start getting excited for what's next.

Lauren 4:26

Next, you know you're getting to the end of the year, and you know, if you've been a senior counselor before, that, everybody's gonna need to send their final transcript somewhere. And let me tell you, the process overwhelms people every time. It feels like no matter how many times you tell them what this process is going to be like, you still have students and parents freaking out, right? So teach them the process for how it works at your school. Are they going to submit it through common app or whatever portal? Do they fill out a Google form for your school? How do you know where their final transcript is going to be sent?

Lauren 4:59

So teach them how to request it, what they should do if they're confused and they're lost. Do they email you? Do they come stop into your office? Do they call the front office in the summertime? I think being as clear as you can with what the instructions are is super helpful. And then post that everywhere. Post it on your website, post on social media, tell important people in the school who might also need to answer those questions, so the senior administrator should know what the deal is with final transcripts, the people at the front office, your clerk or your registrar in your school counseling office, all of these people should be up to date with what this process looks like, so that they can all help students. Even if you are a medium sized school, I feel like this can be very overwhelming for you as a counselor, to answer this question about final transcripts 100 times over.

Lauren 5:48

You should tell them where they can be advocates for themselves and follow up with admissions if they have questions. I like to send a mass email or remind or message out when final transcripts do go out or let them know the date that it's going to happen, because you know that date might come from the district and it cannot happen before then. Those are all finalized at the same time. And so they're saying, Well, my school needs my transcript. My school said they never got it. What do you need to do to head some of that off? You need to tell them when the transcripts will be finalized, and when you hope to get them out. Usually, if you can think ahead of what those questions are going to be, and you put more information out there, you're going to have less people lining up at your door to ask you the same things over and over again.

Lauren 6:34

Next, I think a big part of summer melt for those students who are going to two year and four year colleges is a financial aid confusion. And I don't think that you as the high school counselor need to have every answer. When it comes to financial aid, there are people who specialize in that, and I don't expect you to know everything. They might, students and parents might, but that's not realistic. What you can do is you can walk through that financial aid letter with a student and help them find the information that they need to be able to understand it. It can be confusing for everyone.

Lauren 7:08

Show them how to call and talk to a real human in the financial aid office if they still have questions. Maybe you can role play back and forth, like what that's going to look like when they pick up the phone. Or you can do it on speaker phone, so you can introduce and say, Hey, I'm here with Sara, and she is really trying to understand what this means on here. Could you walk her through that, or have Sara sit there and introduce herself, and set up that conversation and you just be there for that moral support.

Lauren 7:34

If you're looking at this letter with them, and financial aid is going to be the make or break for whether they go to school or not, they're looking at it and they say, No, I still need to make up this difference in order to be able to get to this school, help them. This is kind of the last steps of like tying up those loose ends, putting a bow on their high school graduation and knowing that they are confidently getting ready to enroll, go to orientation, sign up for classes, but they can't do that if they still need to be able to meet some sort of gap with financial aid. And so if they're still confused on how to do that, just be willing to sit with them and figure it out. Reassure them. It can be confusing. If you've never done something before, you can't expect to be an expert at it. It's okay that they have questions. Anytime you do something for the first time, it can feel overwhelming. And then to top that, all off, financial stuff is just really scary and can feel really limiting and exposing. So you just offering to be alongside with them and help them get their questions answered, I think would go steps above and beyond, as you're trying to help them avoid summer melt.

Lauren 8:39

If you have students with IEPs and five of fours on your caseload, you're probably going to be involved in some of their special ed transition meetings. And I think this is a huge place that you can make an impact when it comes to transition out of high school and into a college or professional setting. So you're going to be there as a person to answer a lot of questions as that parent and student are getting ready to leave high school. They probably have questions about their accommodations, and if they can get those in college, and what that looks like, and just how that will transition into their next phase.

Lauren 9:12

And again, you might not have all the answers, but you can have a conversation with a special ed teacher even before you all sit down in the meeting, so that you feel like you can be a little bit more knowledgeable. You might not be the expert, but you can answer a lot of the questions, and just your presence there will be calming enough to be able to help answer some of those simple questions that you don't even realize you're answering all the time and you do have the knowledge to be able to do. So, just by you being there and supporting those families as an extra stakeholder, you are equipping them to avoid that summer melt. They look around that table and say, all of these people are on my team. All of these people are cheering me on. I can come to them if I have questions as I transition with whatever special ed services I'm leaving this high school with, and here's how I go continue getting some sort of support services in college.

This one is kind of fun. I think that this next example that I have for helping your students transition is a fun opportunity to, like, sit down with a group of students, especially maybe in a lunch and learn setting and do some research together and think about life after high school. So I want you to think about how you could help your students connect to campus organizations or residence life before they even get there. I see students become so successful when they already have a game plan before they ever even step on campus.

So that could look like sending an email, following an organization on Instagram or Tiktok, looking up ahead of time when the activity fairs are going to be, and then, oh, putting it on the calendar that they are already using. They should be able to figure out how to connect with people ahead of time. Have they found their roommate yet? How do they do that? Is it in a Facebook group? Is it through DMS on social media? Is it through a mutual friend? Where will they be living? How do they sign up for classes? Those are all really big transition things, but you can start doing that research now, ahead of time.

And yes, some of it will happen at orientation or whenever they step foot on campus. But I find that the more research they can do ahead of time and maybe even connect with another student or a human on campus, like a student leader, someone who's the president of the club that they want to get involved in, it just builds their confidence before they ever even get there. They're just going to be so much more eager and confident to show up to that event or that social setting, because they know the name and the face of someone sort of familiar, even if it was online, that they're going to talk to you when they get there. Like we all want that person to welcome us and smile and say, Oh yeah, I remember chatting with you. That would build so much confidence before they get there, and it would help them not just shy away from not going to the thing because they haven't built up their confidence yet. So I think that can be a really powerful strategy and a fun thing to do with a group of students, maybe even who are going to the same school.

And so that's kind of my next idea here, too. Connect your students with other students in your school who are going the same place as they are. And maybe that's all the students who are going into the military after. They're going to have some common fears and trepidations that it could be really life giving to get to share those with each other. Maybe you are getting all the students going to the big university that everybody goes to, you're getting them all in one room, and they're finding out what dorms everyone's going to live with. They're exchanging phone numbers so that they have their local home network before they even get to the school.

I remember thinking that when I went to the really big state school in my home state of Florida, I went to the University of Florida, I was not excited to go to the same school as a lot of my people from my high school, but then it was actually really nice just to have the familiar setting of someone who sat in my high school cafeteria at the same place in my dorm area that was sitting in the college cafeteria that I could have somebody to have lunch with or dinner with, even if I hadn't made any new friends yet. So there's just a comfort in that transition of bringing even an acquaintance from high school over into the college setting.

If any of these seems like it's really overwhelming for a particular student, you can take any of these ideas, and also just sit with them and role play. Role play, picking up the phone and you being the admissions or the financial aid person and them asking their questions. Just like we would do in any other individual counseling setting, the way we build those skills is to practice and give feedback. And preventing summer melt will come by building that confidence. And so if we can sit with our students or give them a partner to practice that with, I think that'll help equip them with the skills that they need.

So you taking maybe one of these ideas and running with it will help them actually follow through and go through with their goals that they had for after high school. I know that's so exciting and fulfilling for you as a counselor to see students reach their goals, and this is just our last little kick at helping encourage their self advocacy skills. We help build their confidence by helping them figure out how to ask questions and knowing when to ask for help, and then who to ask for help and how to get it and how to know when you found success.

If you wanted to get really into the data, you could track your seniors and keep track of their summer melt percentages before you implemented any of your strategies, and after. And maybe this is some sort of SMART goal that you're measuring long term, like year to year, and you can see if you can improve that. I know there are variables with who those students are going and all that. But I think that you can implement some of these strategies and find some success with your students, and know that you are helping them all the way till the end of graduation.

I know we talked about non counseling duties a few weeks ago, and this is a perfect example of something that you can be focused on with a data driven process, too. That can really replace some of those non counseling duties, if your administration is wondering what you do with all of your extra free time, if you got rid of those non counseling duties. So I'd encourage you to write down some of your data kind of track it, if that is something that you're going to need to be held accountable for.

But if anything, just think about some of these ideas for transitioning your seniors into their next season, and think about the success that you could have in helping them avoid summer melt as they move into their next phase.

I'd be remiss too if I didn't mention that there are two resources that I would find helpful for this in my TPT store. I have a transition to college PowerPoint presentation, and I have a life after high school classroom lesson, that does include just the slides as well, like you could buy those separately. But both of those would be great just talking points for things to think about as you transition into your next stage, or some things that you might need to be practicing before you go out on your own and become fully independent. So I will link to those in the show notes. I think both of those could give you some talking points to use with your students in a classroom, in a lunch and learn, even an individual setting, if you're wondering, what kinds of things should we be talking about as we transition into adulthood and independence.

I'll see you next week for another episode.

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.