Raise Awareness about Relational Aggression

School counselors are responsible for creating awareness of social issues like Relational Aggression. Combating RA is a major focus of our school counseling program this year. Beginning in January we are going to do an online staff/parent book club discussing Little Girls Can Be Mean. Our new bulletin board features the concept that the cycle of relational aggression can be broken. We will also address RA in lessons later in January during No Name Calling Week. Check out the free lessons at this link http://www.nonamecallingweek.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home.html

Groups Galore

These are my fellow pupil services colleagues just before the final session of a small group with fifth grade boys. They wore sweater vests and had treats based on the book they read as the basis for this group. The members very much appreciated the humor and treats as part of the final session. We utilize small group counseling as a major component of our program because it helps students grow and develop and is time efficient.
What are your favorite groups to run?

December - Anxiety

I have not been good about posting this month. It is very hectic at school and at home. I did want to share anxiety is the most common issue I have dealt with as far as individual students this month. I also have over 30 anxious students in small groups. I use Cognitive Behavior techniques with students who run too anxious. I really think they need a checklist of strategies they practice on days with low anxiety so they have a variety of techniques to use when their anxiety level gets too high. This is a concept that takes some work to implement but the pay off is better management of anxiety over the long-term. This is important because anxiety keeps popping up in different forms (like the Whack-a-male game) but the strategies an individual student finds helpful are usually the same.
I'd be very interested in what other school counselors do to help anxious students.