Happy #NSCW18

I hope you are advocating for school counseling this week. I am always grateful that ASCA really promotes our field so well, particularly using the School Counselor of the Year and this week to raise attention to what we do. We are working at the state and district level very hard to position ourselves to lower student to counselor ratios in the future. That requires lots of branding, marketing, and advocacy. Our state proposed legislation this month to mandate the 1:250 ratio for high school. It did not pass this year but we are still trying to get language in a budget amendment to add money for more school counselors. In order for our state SCA to be effective counselors must join. I think it is our professional obligation to join both our state SCA and ASCA. That is who lobbies for our positions. This year our district supervisor bought every counselor a shirt with our district logo and School Counseling in bold yellow letters underneath. I am wearing my "counseling gear" every day this week. We have signs with streamers and some teachers have kids make cards for us. We always schedule the School Counseling Advisory Council Meeting during this week and we give our members treats (we do not give something to all teachers). Our district and schools actively use social media and our web pages to promote school counseling this week. We are also having students from 3 of our elementary schools present a Second Step lesson (that we taught them) to our School Board. The Board Members remember student presentations much more than staff PowerPoints! If you have other good ideas, please leave a comment.