In today’s episode, I’m diving into something that I know so many of us struggle with—how to fit everything into our school counseling program. With all the different awareness months, SEL lessons, and building needs, it can feel like we’re being pulled in a million different directions. And let's be honest, sometimes it just feels like too much.

Key Takeaways:

• It’s okay to not cover everything: You don’t need to feel pressured to address every awareness month. Focus on what’s most relevant to your school community.
• Prioritize what matters most: Identify your building’s needs and let that guide your focus—whether it’s SEL lessons, attendance goals, or conflict resolution.
• Get creative with incorporating awareness topics: Bulletin boards, morning announcements, and collaborating with other staff can help weave these themes into your program without overwhelming you.
• Collaborate with others: You don’t have to do it all alone! Engage your principal, teachers, and other staff to help carry out school-wide initiatives.
• Set realistic goals: Use your calendar to map out non-negotiables and figure out where you have space to introduce additional topics or activities.

I’d love to hear how you’re prioritizing your program! If you have questions or want to share your strategies, feel free to reach out. Don’t forget—you’re making a difference, one student at a time.

Grab the Show Notes: Counselingessentials.org/podcast

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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 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: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Counselor Chat. It's Carol here, and today I thought we would just dive into a topic that I think many of us tend to grapple with, and that's really how to fit everything into our school counseling program. For our last episode, we talked about how to incorporate suicide prevention month into our program. And after that, I had so many counselors reach out to me asking. There are so many awareness months, and there's so many awareness options and choices and awareness dates, and there's my Sel lessons and there's building needs that I have to talk about. And how do I put this all into my program? Well, my friends, sometimes it feels like there's often more to cover than there are hours in the day. So in this episode, we are really going to talk about how we can give ourselves permission to really not cover everything, but how we can make an impact without feeling overwhelmed. Because I hear you trying to put one extra thing I think onto our plates can really be overwhelming. And if we're just looking at October, for example, there's national Bullying Prevention Month, it's National Depression and Mental Health Screening Month, LGBTQ History Month, Disability Employment Awareness Month, Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, ADHD Awareness Month, Global Diversity, and Red Ribbon Week, not to mention World Mental Health Day on October 10. So, I mean, it is jam packed full of awareness months, and we can't. We just. We can't do it all. Even trying to do maybe like Red ribbon week and bullying prevention month and coupling it in with anything else. Maybe it's Hispanic heritage month or LGBTQ month. It can be so much. So it is okay to say I have to cut some things out of. I have to really focus in on the most important things that my building really needs. Because, let's face it, our job, school counseling, it's already a balancing act. I mean, we're juggling individual sessions and group counseling and classroom lessons, and we're managing every crisis and fire that pops up and whatever else happens to walk in our door at any given moment. But then if we have to add in the expectation to cover every awareness month, it can feel like we're being pulled in a million different directions. I think sometimes there's the pressure to be all things to all people, but really that can lead to burnout and ultimately less effective programming. And remember, the goal of our work is to support students in meaningful ways, not to check off every box on a list of topics. It's okay, my friends, to not cover everything. I mean, give yourself permission to prioritize what's most relevant and impactful for your students and your school community. I mean, that's the key. What does your school and your kids, what do they need most? So for our school, for example, we are trying to really dive in to worrying about attendance goals and making an impact on improving attendance in our building. With that, we're trying to really use more community circles and our school counselors, we're the ones in our building that are running the community circles. And then we're also trying to do our sel lessons. And we're trying to make sure that we're covering all the things that our district is asking us to cover, from emotional management and regulation and identification to empathy and kindness and bullying. And then we have to add in Aaron's law and careers. It's a lot, but there are some things that we have found that we really want to make sure we do. So to celebrate bullying Prevention month, because we think that's really important in our school building community is that we are going to have a kindness walk. And my principal, he has kind of taken that on under his wing. We might be doing some lessons on bullying in there and bullying prevention and how to recognize it and what it is and how to resolve conflicts. But we're also. We're going to focus in on kindness as we celebrate bullying prevention month. And what that looks like in my building is us as school counselors, we go in and we're going to teach a little lesson on kindness. This year. We have a sweet little story about Bella the butterfly and how with every act of kindness, she gets more colorful and beautiful and vibrant. And then in conjunction with our art teacher, our art teacher is going to go in and create a project with them where they are making these beautiful, colorful butterflies that we will put throughout our school building on the hallways. So it reminds us that kindness is very colorful and that with each act of kindness, we are doing great things. That's how we're recognizing that. But did you see what I did there or what I was talking about? It's not just the counselors, but our principal is involved by having us do a kindness walk, and our art teacher is involved by having this school wide art project. So I think it's also important to see who else is in your building that can help support some of these goals and programs that you want to incorporate into your school. Other ways to incorporate awareness topics without the overwhelm can be bulletin boards and displays. So I have always really wanted to do something for Hispanic Heritage Month, I was thinking about creating a bulletin board that really highlights key figures and facts and resources and some important people and what makes them so famous. I want it to be kind of interactive, so the kids will have to lift the flap and read about each person. But I think that's one way that we can also incorporate this awareness. We also have daily morning announcements. And another thing that we're doing in my building this year is we're really focused in on, as well as attendance metacognition. If you're not really familiar with metacognition, it means thinking about thinking. And once again, we are doing it as a whole school community. So we. My principal has decided that this year we're going to have monthly school wide meetings or assemblies. And for our first one that we had just last week, our second graders really took the role on this, and they created this cute little song about metacognition and what it is. And I'm thinking about thinking, I would love to sing it for you, really? But I don't know all the words, but it was super cute, and they sang it to everyone. And each day on the announcements, there is a word of the day. I've actually been creating slides, morning slides that once again incorporates our community building with this metacognition and then our monthly theme and some of this awareness stuff and so on. Every morning slide, I have a word of the day with its meaning and then how to use it in a sentence. I have a community building question, so it could be Monday, Wednesday, Friday is just a general type of question, and Tuesday, Thursdays, I am doing a would you rather. So would you rather wear the same clothes every day or eat the same food every day? Could be an example of one of the questions, as well as a little check in, a mood check in, and then a positive quote for the day. And so we've incorporated that all on one morning slide. And I have all of September done, all of October done. And now I'm currently working on November, and because it's only one slide a day and we have a team of people who are helping me come up with the words of the day and things like that, it really hasn't been a super hard task because I can create a couple slides a day and I'm actually pretty far ahead than where we are in our current school year, so little things like that can be helpful too. You can also set up things like resource tables where you have maybe a little small table in your library or office with books or pamphlets or information related to the month's theme and invite students to explore them during their free time. You can even collaborate with your library staff to feature books and resources that are connected to the month's awareness theme. So I think there's lots of ways to really incorporate all these awareness dates into your program. You can even incorporate them into some of your already existing lessons. Like I said, we really focus in on sel every month, but as we were talking about bullying and incorporating a little kindness in there, we're also with our older kids. I can even when we talk about, like, maybe growth mindset, because I know growth mindset is one of the topics. You can even incorporate some famous people in there. So if you want to, wherever that month is, you can incorporate maybe it's LGBTQ or maybe it's hispanic or maybe it's Pacific Islanders. You can incorporate any awareness program or people or ideas or thoughts into, I think, some of your existing lessons. Because what we want to do is have students really understand the lived experiences of other cultures or groups, because the more they know, the more they're able to really develop empathy. And one thing that I learned from a training that I went to this summer is we make up stories of what we don't know about people. So instead of letting the people tell us their own story, if we never hear about them or we don't know what their lived experiences are, we kind of make it up in our mind what we think that it is, and that's not necessarily what it really is. So we want to give kids the opportunity to understand the perspectives of other people. We also need to really focus on what's most impactful, because sometimes the best way to support our students is by really focusing on what's most impactful for our specific school community. We have to assess our building's needs. We have to really say, what are the primary issues or needs of my school? And if your school is struggling with conflict resolution or bullying or maybe it's attendance, you have to prioritize those SCL lessons and weave in the awareness monthly themes where they kind of naturally fit. And like I said, partnering with staff to see how they can incorporate these themes into their curriculum is really helpful, too. And if you can't reach all students through classroom lessons, you also might want to consider some small group discussions on awareness topics because this can actually be more manageable and it can actually allow for deeper engagement. So another thing that I'm doing this year is I'm trying to invite all my students down for lunch, and I'm taking little groups of four students at a time from each grade level, and they're eating lunch with me. I thought this was a great way to really spend some more quality time with the kids, and I'm actually cycling through the groups really quickly. I do have my normal groups as well, so I have my tier two groups that are also meeting for like, impulse control or self esteem or coping skills and that type of thing. But I also have these lunch bunches that are coming in, eating lunch, and we're getting to know each other, and these are really great opportunities to talk about some of those topics as well. And I said this last time, you can't pour from an empty cup. You just can't. So it's really important that as you are trying to fit all this stuff into your curriculum, that you have to remember you can't cover every topic, you can't meet every expectation. Otherwise you will burn out and it is okay to let it go. You have to really set realistic goals. You have to determine what's feasible for you this school year and pull out your calendar, because I think that's the best way to see what you can and can't do. You have to be able to say, these are the non negotiables. These are the topics that I absolutely have to talk about, and then see what space you have left. Is there an extra week somewhere where you can say, oh, I have this week here where I don't have to have a specific sel lessons. So I will use this week to do something, whether it's awareness week or maybe it's another topic that you really feel is important for your kids to have and make sure that you acknowledge the impact that you are making. No matter how small it might seem, whether it's a single bulletin board or a powerful conversation with a student, it all matters. And remind yourself, it's okay to say, no, you're doing the best you can, and that's enough. Remember, my friends, you're only one person and you are making a difference every day. Give yourself the grace to prioritize and focus on what's truly important and impactful for your kids. It's okay not to cover everything because you are still doing incredible work. Thank you, my friends, for joining me on this episode of counselor chat. I hope you found some helpful tips and strategies for prioritizing your program. If you have any questions or would like to share your strategies, I'd really love to hear from you. And until next time, take care of yourself and keep making a difference, one student at a time. Have a great week, and bye for now.

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@counselingessentials.org podcast be sure to hit, follow, or subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you would be so kind to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it. Want to connect? Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at counseling essentials until next time. Can't wait till we chat. Bye for now.