Diaphragm Breathing

Here is a well done brief video to teach breathing to get calm 4-7-8 It is important to teach students to breathe from diaphragm not the chest. The video and a brief practice could be done at the beginning of a lesson or group session.

What Makes Kids Happy? ("Happy" by Pharrell Williams)

Cyberwise

Cyberwise.org has lots of resources for educators and parents.  Check out some of their videos about digital citizenship.

Managing Anxiety

If you are looking for a good resource for parents with anxious children check out this video from Conscious Discipline Managing Anxiety It stresses the importance of name it, claim it, and tame it.  Shows actual case of a girl who carried a card with her affirmation (I'm safe, I'm calm, and I can handle this) until it became a part of her affirming self-talk.

Counseling Advisory Committee

Even though we don't go back to school until after Labor Day I have been getting my "advisory council" organized.  I asked, and they agreed, two new teachers to serve and 3 will return.  We have 2 parents returning and we will recruit 2-3 more when I return in 2 weeks.  We try to have about 1/3 of the committee be new each year.  We are fortunate to have most of our parent members with mental health related field backgrounds. We also try to invite at least two minority parents since our staff is 90 percent Caucasian. We also invite two fifth grade student representatives who are SCA officers. We have always met once a quarter. That keeps the committee in the loop all year but is not a huge burden. We meet before school and the meetings are only 40 minutes long ( and then we generally debrief with the parent members for about 10 minutes longer).  The first meeting of the school year is always in October (then December, February, and April).  We propose draft counseling program goals and solicit other ideas for the year.  We also share the evaluation results from the previous school year.  For example, suggestions for books for our parent-staff book discussion.  Each subsequent meeting we update the committee on the goals. I sent out tentative dates for approval by our administrators.  Officially both our Principal and Assistant Principal are on the committee but they take turns actually attending. We send out an agenda before each meeting with handouts and follow--up with minutes about a week after each meeting. Last year a big part of the Committee's work revolved around our applying to Re-RAMP.

Measuring Elementary School Students' Social and Emotional Skills

A newly released report by Child trends identifies 5 groups of social emotional skills and provides educators with tools to measure and monitor social and emotional skills that lead to academic success.  The skills are: Self-control; Persistence; Mastery Orientation; Academic Self-Efficacy; and Social Competence.  The report recommends measuring these skills with either teacher and/or student surveys.  They provide the surveys in at Appendices and scoring guides.  I plan to use the student survey with all my grade 3-5 students this fall.  I highly recommend you download this report at http://www.childtrends.org/

ASCA Scene

Connect and Compare
Are you a member of the ASCA SCENE, online professional networking site? If not, you’re missing out on a valuable benefit. The SCENE lets you share your experiences with others in the field and, even more importantly, get help with your problems or concerns, advice on new products and programs and much more. With the SCENE, help is as close as your computer or mobile device. I use PowerPoints and lesson plans from the file cabinet all the time.  I also check the ASCA Resource Center periodically for ideas and resources other counselors have shared.