Data, data, data!

I don't know about you but a few years ago the word data kind of scared me. When I was a teacher, I felt like data judged me as an educator but now I know that data is my bff. It is my accountability. It helps me to create my counseling program and needs of my students. I saw a video that someone had posted on facebook about how their school used data in their counseling program and oh.my.word. I feel in love with what their counselors were doing. You can watch the video HERE.

I would love to know how you and your school uses data to read your students' needs. So please feel free to share. At my campus, our principal is amazing with data. he has even earned the nickname Dr. Data because everything is backed by data. Any struggling students are monitored and literally no student falls between the cracks., It is quite impressive. I think it works so great at our school because there is a balance of heart and data. Although, everything is tied to data, everything has a lot of care put into it so we don't lose sight of the purpose. I will definitely be looking into ways to implement something like the counselors in the video did. I think as counselors, we need to back up what we do. Of course, we wear many hearts and make a difference in the lives of our students but we need to make sure we have the evidence for our schools, district, and state to show how much we make a difference.

Moving on, I wanted to share my Conversation Starters which you can find HERE for purchase. I love using these in groups and individual counseling. They are also great to use as icebreakers. Just print, laminate, cut out, and put in a cute mason jar or cup and you have a quick and easy resource ready to go!! The topics these cover are self esteem, friendship, and bullying.

Of course, I would never leave you with a freebie. This counselor to do list can either be printed to take notes on of big projects or framed so that you can reuse it with a dry erase marker. I can't wait to frame mine for my desk!!

You can get yours for free HERE. I hope you all have a great week! Please feel your fingers crossed that all goes well with our closing on our new house. We are so excited to get in and settled!! I will post pics soon!!