Lauren: So let's talk data. I know it doesn't always feel like
the most glam thing to talk about, but it's really
important, especially at this time of year. Your data is a
huge advocacy tool, and honestly, it's pretty pointless
if you just let it go to waste and you don't do something with
it. So let's be thinking about that as we get into the last few
months of the school year.
You got into this profession to make a difference in your
students' lives, but you're spread thin by all the things
that keep getting added to your to do list. I can't create more
hours in the day, but I can invite you into my counselor
clique where you'll finally catch your breath. Come with me
as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that'll
help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your
students. I'm Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype
girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program
and remind you of how much you love your job.
I hope this episode is coming to you at the perfect time where
you're thinking, Okay, I only have a few weeks or a few months
left. What should I be keeping in mind so that when we get to
the point where we're trying to cruise out the door and turn our
keys in and lay by the pool—okay, wait. I know that was
wishful thinking. But when you are ready to walk out that door,
I want to make sure that you are ready for summer, but that
you've collected your data and used it in a way that can help
remind you of the impact that you've made this school year, so
that when you are relaxing by the pool, you know that what you
have done has been good work, and you are advocating for all
of the great things that you've done this year, and you are
dreaming of all the things that you want to do in the future.
And you can only do that with the data that you've collected.
So you may already have in mind that you want your data to move
your program somewhere special. Maybe you're hoping that next
year you get another counselor hired on, so that your caseload
will be lower and you can have more time with students, because
that's what you really want, right? Your data is clutch in
making that happen. Maybe you're hoping that next year is the
year they assign someone else to testing, anyone but you, and
your data right now could be the thing that moves the needle for
that as job responsibilities are shifting here and there, and as
your principal is maybe hiring someone or moving someone into a
different position.
Perhaps you're just feeling really scattered in general, and
you're wondering if anything you did this year was actually worth
it. Putting together your data where you tie a pretty bow on it
can be a huge sigh of relief and a really welcome reminder, like
what I'm doing truly actually matters. Students are different
because of what I did. And I may sound like a broken record, I
say that a lot. I say, Are students different because of
what I did? I love measuring our effectiveness of being a high
school counselor by this phrase, are students different because
of what I'm doing here?
Whatever you're dreaming of for your program, it's not going to
happen on its own. You know that. You have to bring
something compelling to the table and make it impossible to
say no to. If you want big changes, you got to have the
data to support it. Data is going to be your best friend in
making that happen. So there's a huge piece of all of this that's
advocacy driven. You've done the work this school year. So let's
see the results, and then let's tell other people about the
results.
Now, I'll admit, my brain does not naturally think in numbers.
It doesn't even go there. If I'm being honest, I still have
trauma from my advanced math classes in high school where I
never knew what was going on. And I found it really annoying
that I had to take statistics in undergrad and grad school to
find T scores and Z scores and whatever other scores that I
literally don't know what that means right now. That stuff does
not matter to me if I can't figure out what it means or why
I collected it, or what implications it has on my
program.
So I'm here to encourage you that it doesn't have to be
complicated. Don't make it complicated. I'm gonna link in
the show notes a blog post that really simplifies what you can
be looking for and where you can pull numbers from. I'm also
going to link to a free resource that is 49 places that you can
look for data in your program, just ideas of places to dig in
for numbers that are already sitting there waiting for you to
peek at them. So you can download that one for yourself
by clicking on the link in the show notes or going to
counselorclique.com/dataideas.
I want to give you some ideas of some of those places where you
can pull those numbers and see how they may be impactful for
your people. You know, all those stakeholders who are taking
interest in what you're doing. But remember, this is totally
unique to you, your program, what your goals were for this
year, what you're hoping to change for next year, or just
ideas that you hope to implement in the future.
So I would start first by reflecting on my goals from this
year. Did your team, are you working with a team, did you all
set goals way back when, in the summer, on a planning day or
when the year started? Or did you write out some goals in your
administrative agreements? Did you sit down and determine the
direction of where your program would go, or what you'd be doing
this year at a team meeting?
If the answer is no to any or all of those, step one for you
is thinking about next year, putting that on the calendar,
because we can't go back in time right now and change that for at
the end of this year. But if you did have those goals, let's stop
and think, How did you do? It's time to pull out all the
numbers. I'm hoping this one isn't too difficult, like I'm
hoping that you can look at the goal and then kind of answer
that, evaluate it, did you meet it? So if you had a goal of
doing X amount of classroom lessons, or you were hoping Y
percent of students were promoted, or Z number of
students could identify their number one career cluster after
your career fair, did those things happen? Let's provide the
data answers to all of those smart goals that you set.
So remember, you accomplishing those or not accomplishing those
is not a true measure of your value or your success as a high
school counselor this year. You may have arbitrarily picked a
number to increase by or a percentage to hit just because
you needed to pick a number that felt right, because you had
nothing else to start from. So now that you've got a good
starting place, you can pace yourself for years to come. So
don't get down on yourself if you did not meet your goal.
Are you a new high school counselor navigating your role
for the first time? Maybe you started in this role mid year,
or you're dreaming of getting your first job when you finish
up your internship. I've got the perfect free resource for you.
Head to counselorclique.com/newcounselorplaylist
for a curated Spotify playlist, just for new high school
counselors. This tailored resource will help you level up
your counseling skills, boost your confidence, and gain some
wisdom that'll ease your transition for your beginning
years. With episodes like, what I wish I knew as a beginning
high school counselor, to mistakes to avoid high school
counseling, you'll be ready for anything that comes your way.
Get ready to hit play on your podcast player and start your
journey with confidence, inspiration and expertise. Head
to counselorclique.com/newcounselorplaylist.
Happy listening.
I'd say that following up on those smart goals with the
results of data or closing the gap goal are your key places
that you're going to want to pull data from to highlight. But
maybe after looking at the free data ideas guide I mentioned, or
just contemplating some different types of data, like
process, perception, outcome data, you may realize that you
want to organize it in a different way. I write about
this in a blog post that I can link, but it's worth reminding
to you if it's been a hot minute since you learned these things
in grad school.
So I'll just kind of chat with you here real quick about
process, perception, outcome data. A reminder—process data is
like your cold, hard facts, like, how many students attended
an event, how many classroom lessons you did, or how many
students finished a small group that you ran.
The perception data can be things like quotes from students
or pictures of events or initiatives that you hosted
related to your goals, or even stories from your students or
your school counseling team. Perception data really can help
you answer questions of how students are different because
of what you're doing as a high school counselor. The thing I
said before as like a really great measure, perception data
is kind of the encompassing thing that could help you get
there. So when students answer questions like, I know, or I
believe, or I can, like I can do this thing now, you've got some
insight for your perception data. I like to work these
phrases into post test or like post surveys or, needs
assessment's not the right word, but the surveys that you give,
or the ways that you're assessing students when you're
asking for feedback for something that they've done.
Outcome data is probably the stuff that you're getting
intimidated with around data, the graphs, the charts, the
visuals with the numbers that you collected that show the
results. Think of outcome data like the before and after to
show the effectiveness of your intervention that you put into
A reminder for all of these sorts of data points. Of course,
place.
it doesn't necessarily feel good to be like, Oh, we didn't hit
our goals. Or here's the data to show for it, and it's not the
data I thought it was gonna be. But maybe your outcome data
reveals that your intervention wasn't as meaningful of a thing
as you hoped it would be. But guess what? That is still good
news. You can scratch it from your interventions for next
year, or trash it completely so you don't waste your time
anymore. Or you could tweak things with that intervention,
and now you have education from the data that you collected to
change those things up, and really permission to change it
up.
So now, once you've kind of thought of where you're going to
pull your data from, what kind of data that's going to look
like, what are you going to do with it? I want you to spread it
far and wide. Think of all of your end of the year meetings
that you may already have on your calendar, or the places
that you're going to show up as you're wrapping things up and
putting a bow on the end of your year, I want you to format your
data to be shared out in these places.
So do you have one more advisory council meeting? Use this space
to revisit the goals you've been talking about with this crew,
and then share your results. These people are showing up.
They're interested in it. You've got a captive audience, so let's
go ahead and share it with them. This can be on a printable PDF
handout, like to all of the members of your advisory
council, or can be on a slide deck that you present on a TV
screen. This is a great small group of people to share those
more personal perception type data stories with them. You
don't have to use real names, but you can share student quotes
or pictures of events or interventions that you ran this
year. People love visuals and storytelling. I know that I do.
I'm sure you'll have an end of year staff luncheon, or one more
faculty meeting. Ask for a few minutes of their time, or, you
know, get on the principal's list of the presentations that
are happening at that faculty meeting. If you've been working
on your teachers to have buy in, or this is something that you've
been trying to get them on your team to care about what you're
doing, it's important to be transparent with that data you
collected. Don't just present it at the beginning of the year,
tell them your role and then never check back in and share
what you're doing. I think a lot of respect can come from being
transparent with your numbers.
So let them see what came out of your data driven program that
you've told them that you're running, let them celebrate with
you. You can probably use the same sorts of compelling data
that you did at your advisory council here with your teachers.
Remind them that you got to this point because of their
willingness to partner with you. You genuinely couldn't do it
without their partnership. But if you're listening to this and
you feel like you don't have them on board with what you're
doing, you know that it feels like running a marathon in the
mud, like you've got boots on, trailing through the mud and you
can't make any progress without their buy in. So this is all
kind of tied together.
You can send a follow up email after this faculty meeting with
those key points that you summarized at the meeting. So
whether someone was there and they need this re-emphasized and
they get to look at it one more time, or maybe they missed the
meeting, you're hitting those key things with them here. So
maybe you can link to that PDF that you printed out and put on
their tables. Maybe you can just hit those bullet points, make it
short and sweet in an email, and have them be able to visually
read that and remember all the good things that you're doing.
If you have a district get together that maybe someone
higher up than you hosts, don't be afraid to share out your good
things. I know sometimes it can feel awkward to be the one that
stands up and says, Yeah, I have something to share, but you
being one person to be bold and start that conversation will
inspire other high school counselors. So I'd challenge
you, why can't it be you who stands up and shares something
awesome?
Share online in your communities that you're a part of. If you're
in the Clique Collaborative, go share over in our community, we
want to celebrate with you and chat about how you got your
results and what you hope to do differently next year. If your
school has a social media page or your school counseling
department is active on social media, share out some of those
results there, people want to celebrate you, and honestly,
they're gonna file it in the back of their brain, like, hey,
what they're doing matters, and that's really cool. I didn't
even know they did that.
I ended up having a lot more to say about end of year data than
I originally thought I did, because, like I said, I don't
think it's particularly sexy or glamorous to talk about data,
especially when that's not my natural inclination to gravitate
towards data. It's not what I want to do for fun. My husband
would beg to differ in terms of interests and stuff, he's the
numbers guy. But I wanted you to think a little bit differently
about the data that you might uncover that is already in front
of you, that process, perception, outcome data. And
then I want you to brainstorm places that you're going to
share that good news to. So use those five different places that
I gave you, and I'm excited to see and hear how you share out
your data and how it inspires other people to take interest in
your school counseling program.
So remember to check out the show notes for that free data
guide, and then all of the related blog posts and podcast
episodes around data and other end of year ideas. If I spark
some questions, always feel free to reach out to me on Instagram
DMs, I am happy to chat, and I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to today's episode of High School
Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today
can be found in the show notes and also at
counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you
listen to your podcasts so that you never miss a new episode.
Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me
a DM @counselorclique, that's C, L, I, Q, U, E. I'll see you next
week.