Elementary Lessons

After struggling for a while about what to do for my elementary lessons, I remembered I had the book, "7 Habits for Happy Kids". I read the first story and discussion questions and skimmed the rest. This weekend I have spent a great deal of time online searching for various grade level activities to go with each habit.

I think I've gotten a pretty good grasp on my 7 Habits journey with the kids now. This is a great book that teaches so many things that seem to have fallen by the wayside. I have the book, "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens", but have never made it through the whole thing. I love it when I can use a story book to teach a lesson. I think the kids remember more.

I also previewed a movie for our Boys' Night Out. I found it and a free discussion guide to go with it online. It's the movie, "Hoot". There are so many great lessons in this story. The one we're going to focus on is bullying.

My first college week is this coming week. I have one planned every month for the next few months. This month it is the same week as homecoming week. Unfortunately, this couldn't be prevented as the week coincides with the day and time that particular college representative could be at our school. Our first set of activities are as follows: MONDAY, bring in a mascot representation; TUESDAY, do a website scavenger hunt; WEDNESDAY, find the eight staff in our MS/HS that attended the university and THURSDAY, tell how the mascot got his name. There are no activities for Friday because the representative will be at our school.

All students participating in activities MON-THURS get their name in a drawing and while at our school on Friday, the rep. will draw a student name and that person will receive a larger prize from the university. Some weeks we'll have different activities. Some weeks a few of the activities will be the same as listed above. Activities will all be Mon-Thurs and Friday the university rep. will be at our school and conduct a student drawing for a larger prize.

I love my job and impacting so many students in so many ways!

Missing Pictures

Here are some pictures that have been missing on my blog lately.

I used Mrs. Potatohead along with a coloring sheet as my introductory lesson in the lower elementary grades. For the upper grades I just printed off some pictures of me and my family/interests as a way to introduce myself and then spoke to the kids about my job and what they could expect.

First set are pictures from my sidewalk drawings and writings for the first day of school.

These are the treats I prepared for teachers and staff for the first day with students.

This is the movie we're getting ready to show for Girls' Night Out.

Below are a couple of bulletin boards I've made. The Bee board is in the elementary and the SWAG board is in the high school. I missed getting a picture of the board from the beginning of the year in both locations.

This is the location of our new pantry. It is just a closet with shelves. The food shown is our first month's delivery. The boxes contain pasta, cereal, juice, apple sauce, various canned vegetables, soup, raman style noodles, pancake mix, jelly, crackers, peanut butter, tuna and some bath products. It will grow each month as I order new things and replace what has been used. I'm very grateful to the food bank in our state who makes this possible to our school and many others. It is completely free. We just provide the space and gather information to provide the food for our students in need.

Up and Going

I have been burning up my keyboard lately emailing college representatives left and right. I have decided to host a college week each month. A different college will be promoted each time. I've been contacting college representatives to see if they would like to come to our school on the Friday their school is represented. Many contact me and want to meet with seniors and/or juniors anyway. I've also requested, for those possible, to provide us some small prizes (pencils, pens, stickers, etc.) so that I could conduct some activities throughout the week and participants receive a prize along with their name going into a "hat". At the end of the week a name is drawn from the "hat" and the winner is given a larger prize (mug, pennant, t-shirt, just something bigger than the previous prizes). Since it will be on Friday, the representative will potentially be at our school to do the final drawing and award the prize. I hope this is something that grows with each passing month. I've scheduled at least seven college reps already along with their school's week on the calendar!

The second thing I've been woring on is an assembly for our school. Since the cost is significantly more than our school can afford, we're going to coop with two other schools. The assembly group will meet with the individual schools, but all in one day since we are so close together. We are all quite a long distance from their home base. By cooping they are only traveling the distance one time.

In less than two weeks we will conduct our first Girls' Night Out. We chose to only include 6th grade girls and a significant adult female for each girl. I handed out the invitations for students to take home today. While in that class the boys started asking about a boys'night out. It's already in the works. I ordered the movie Hoot and will preview it this weekend to see if it is useable. I think I can adapt the power point from the girls program to fit the boys' movie.

As of today I have been to every class and grade in the elementary. I used the Mrs. Potato Head lesson for grades P-K through 2nd. I found a plain Mrs. Potato Head color sheet to use with it. For grades 3-6 I copied off pictures about my interests and family and integrated my job duties along with what to expect into that.

Swimming with the tide

Today has been quite a busy day! I've been working in my office at the desk most of the day. I'm glad it's Friday because I need to move a little more. I have an assembly for Red Ribbon week potentially booked. This is in part thanks to another school up the road that is going to partner with us. We will have the assembly in the morning and they will host it in the afternoon, or vise versa. That way the cost is significantly better due to less travel time and expenses. We might be able to partner with a third, depending on the distance between the schools. I also contacted one of our military branches today. The recruiter for our National Guard came by earlier this week. I contacted him today about doing a Veteran's Day assembly for us. He agreed and I am so glad! That is yet another thing that is mostly off my plate now. I am leaving it up to him as to whether he wants to go to the elementary classrooms or do one full assembly for them and another for our MS/HS combined. Whatever he wants to do will be greatly appreciated. Now I just have to find something for Constitution Week. I didn't know I had to do something for that week, but...SURPRISE, I do! I was also able to get all sophomores and eighth graders loaded up into a document and sent in to ACT for our EXPLORE and PLAN tests later. There will probably be some mistakes in the upload, there always are, but, for the most part it is finished. I found mistakes in two girls' (seniors) transcripts from the previous school year and I have the information being sent to me by our career tech school so corrections can be made early next week. I started gathering elementary teachers' preference for a time when can go to their classrooms for lessons. I am going to try for every other week. I'm also going to try to keep them all on Tues./Thurs. I'm feeling pretty accomplished today! It's Friday, after all, and it's been a very busy week. Right now, I feel as though I'm swimming with the tide instead of already swimming against it. I was able to encourage a fellow counselor in the area. She is new to her district and a first year counselor. I let her know she could call me any time and how friendly the other counselors were in the area. We will meet in a couple of weeks at an area counselors' breakfast. Looking back I remember how I stumbled around so much with so many things I was already aware of in my role as counselor but, not quite sure how to go about completing them (technicalities). After four years I still fumble with some things here and there. I'm glad to help someone else any way I can. I hope you all have a wonderful, restful weekend. I know I will, when I'm not searching for something to do for Constitution Day/Week. :)

Kick off to 2014-15

We have been in school two days (with students) and so far it has been great. Prior to students coming back I decorated the sidewalks and entrances with chalk. Even the high school/middle school students enjoyed seeing it! My goal this year is to help make everyone feel appreciated. Our school lost three teachers (retirement or moving out of state) and no replacements were hired. That means teachers left here had to absorb those classes (English and Science at the high school level and remediation at high school and middle school levels). Instead of teaching some of the electives they've taught for years or subjects they love teaching, they had to be moved into core areas as their certification permitted. Many are unhappy, but chose to come back here anyway. I'm told our budget is tight, tight, tight. So, my goal is to show appreciation and be some encouragement to everyone, staff and students alike. Due to this new avenue I decided to make tiny cupcakes for the entire staff, (bus drivers, maintenance, teachers, secretaries, aides, and administration), and put labels on water bottles. I put notes on everyone's door before I left the day before school. When I got to school the next day, I put the cupcakes and water in the lounge for everyone to pick up as they signed or checked in. It was so much fun! I got the cupcake toppers and the water bottle labels on www.thenewprincipalprinciples.blogspot.com. She did something similar for her staff last year. She was kind enough to update everything and make them available for download (free) this year. I am looking forward to the year and how I make an impact (again) here. I already have Career Cafe in the works and will introduce Lunch Bunch in addition to that. I have a Girls' Night Out planned for one of the elementary grades. When the weather turns colder and students are sitting in the cafeteria (high school and middle school) I plan on breaking out my dry erase boards and hosting some trivia games where tables compete for a small prize (candy). I'm not sure what else I'll be able to squeeze in to the year. I still have a lot of administrative duties on top of any counseling, college and career planning and student services.

Friday, Friday, Friday!

I am now less than a week away from starting back to school. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love my job, but I'm always sad to see breaks come to an end (just like weekends). Something that I have come to realize this summer, more than any other, is that I sort of fall apart without a routine. I mean, our daughter is grown, there is no one here on a regular basis through the day but me. While I do get things done that are necessary, I fall behind on other things or they completely are non existent during the summer. I have no schedule. Shame on me! For that reason I am ready to get back to school and to a routine! I have been watching the three or four Facebook counseling groups and they are such a great resources! It's amazing to me how many counselors are working throughout the summer. I save documents I find online and pin things on Pinterest. I may order a book or resource, but that's pretty much it. A couple of years ago I wanted to do a Girls' Night Out: show a movie, eat, give away some door prizes and just have some fun. I ordered a movie and began gathering door prizes. That's a far as it got, until now. Today I previewed the movie and plan on hosting a Girls' Night Out this year. The movie is amazing and so well done. I saw a post by Danielle Shultz on her School Counselor blog and plan do to something similar. The movie is age approriate, there is no violence, nudity or foul language in it. It is very well done, but then it IS an American Girl movie. I can't wait to schedule that event! I highly recommend you looking at Danielle's blog to see what she did, or just wait until mine is complete and go from there. I have a busy last week before Friday's work day is here. Everything from car to doctor to funeral and completion of a couple more projects is ahead this week.

Good-bye June

June is almost over. Wow, hasn't it passed quickly? I have made a few trips to school this summer. I went down a couple of times to help with some testing data which had to be finalized during the month of June. My next couple of trips were to work on my office. My husband and I went down last Saturday to paint it. I sure appreciated him spending his day off tackling that with me. I made two trips this week to put thing in place and things on the wall. The paperwork that had accumulated needed to be sorted and/or discarded as well. I worked on the desk and it's contents along with the credenza and hutch. It is all almost finished. I had hopes of getting it comopletely ready for my return on August 1st before this month was over. I'm very close. I think one more trip and I'm there. That trip may be Saturday morning. It looks very different already than it did a week ago. The previous counselor was there two years, she took my place when I left after being there two years. She passed away from an inoperable brain tumor. We had become friends before I left and it has all been very sad and trying. I wanted to make a change in the office so that it looked really different. I thought this might help students and staff as well. I think I've succeeded. The walls have gone from an off white to a bold green. The windows now have a pretty yellow, floral topper and I've moved in an extra file cabinet and some furniture. I can't wait to get it finished and pictures posted.