Hi, my friends. When I sat down to come up with another episode
for you all, I thought back to the podcast survey that a lot of
you all answered, and I was thinking, we need to talk about
non counseling duties. So let's talk about how we navigate non
counseling duties that just take up too much time, because it's a
real thing. And depending on who your administrators are, what
your team looks like, how many counselors are at your school,
you might feel a little overwhelmed by those non
counseling duties.
And then, you know what? You might not be very happy in your
job when you're doing more non counseling duties than direct
hours with students. Isn't that always the case? We want those
direct hours with students, because we want to feel like
we're making an impact, and it often feels hard to make an
impact when you're drowning under paperwork and your desk is
an absolute mess because you have a lot of administrative
type things to get to.
Now when I say administrative, I don't mean like being an
administrator, like an assistant principal at your school. I mean
those tasks that just take up your day, eat at your time with
things that feel a little pointless, like spreadsheets,
checklists, to do lists, paperwork, credit checks on
transcripts, emailing people, all of the other things that are
not directly face time with students.
Okay, first, I want to give you some examples of how I have
dealt with these non counseling duties, like, what are the
duties that I'm talking about here, and how did I really feel
weighed down by them? Because you might be able to relate, and
you might be able to pick out some of these same things, or
maybe yours are a little bit different, but I kind of want
you to pinpoint what those are for you. And then I want to talk
about how to advocate for your time, especially to your
administrators at your school. And then how to think about
possibly outsourcing some of those non counseling tasks, or
just at least considering what could be possible if you were
able to outsource those or put them somewhere else so that you
could get other things done.
You got into this profession to make a difference in your
students' lives, but you're spread thin by all of 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.
So let's talk about those non counseling duties. When I say
that, what comes to my mind are things like testing, lunch duty
or hallway duties, bus duties, and then those other
administrative tasks or responsibilities. So let me give
you an example of each of these, and where I have really felt
stuck with each of these, and then I'll kind of tell you my
problem solving process and how I worked through these things
and what the result was.
So I'm pretty sure I've told this story before, but it's been
a while. I have very vivid memories of being in my first,
second, maybe even third year of being a counselor at my school
and being stuck with testing. I was the 10th grade counselor, at
that time we were grade level counselors. We didn't roll with
students. We did not divide by alphabet. We were strictly grade
level counselors, because that's how many counselors we had at
our school. Maybe some of you can relate to that. I was the
10th grade counselor. And along with being the 10th grade
counselor, came being in charge of the state testing that all
10th graders took. It was one of those graduation exams that
tested their English and Math basic skills, and they had to
pass it in order to graduate from high school. They gave it
to them in 10th grade, if they didn't pass it, they had a
couple more tries to get their diploma.
Okay, I was the one in charge of all of the testing for, I mean,
how many students was that? Over 450. I mean, probably 480
students. And I had the delight of organizing the test booklet,
sharpening the pencils, putting them all in the correct baskets,
training the teachers and making sure it all went well on the
test day. That was not even all of it. I know, if you have had
any part of testing, you know a lot goes into it, from filtering
lists of students, taking out the students with
accommodations, planning the accommodations for those
students and who is going to give those tests, what you're
going to do with all the other students who aren't testing. I
mean, it feels like a big responsibility that they want to
put on one person.
At this point in time, our district was not on board with
counselors not having testing. So what I'm saying is counselors
had testing on their plates at this point, there was not a push
to take this off counselors' plates as a non counseling duty
yet. So I have these memories, terrible memories. Let's talk
PTSD about these memories. Yes, I do. I would be sitting in a
locked testing room, basically a room with a metal door, no
windows, with all these baskets as I was trying to organize
these tests. I would come in when it was still dark outside.
I would leave for the day when it was still dark outside.
I was exhausted. It felt so high pressure. I mean, all you hear
is, you don't do this right, you mess up, you're going to jail. I
mean, that's what I thought about when I was leaving work
and when I was doing this. It was high stress, high stakes. It
was tedious, it was boring. It was all those things.
And I don't remember why, but either my principal called me
into his office or I went in there. I think I was going into
his office kind of after hours, asking for help, saying, Hey, I
could just use some extra hands. Or, teachers are complaining
about this. Can you get some of them on board with me? I don't
know. I was just asking for something because I was doing
something that I didn't want to do, and I was getting a lot of
pushback, and I didn't feel like I had people on my team. And now
I can rally people for something, but it's very hard to
rally people to get excited about testing that no one wants
to do. And it looked like I was, I mean, I was the one in charge
of it, and so it looked like I was giving all these directions.
I was the strict person about this, which really does go
against everything in my personality. I don't care. I
don't care about anything that much. It's hard to care about
testing, which took me away from working with students.
I remember feeling so absolutely defeated because when I went to
talk to my principal, he just didn't hear me or see me. I
remember turning around leaving his office and crying. I have
only cried a handful of times in this job as a high school
counselor, and this was one of those times I just knew that
counting test booklets, sharpening pencils, writing
procedures for teachers. It just wasn't my skill set. It wasn't a
good use of my gifts. And now I am a big proponent for being a
team player. I would never just not do something because I was a
snowflake and I just didn't feel like it aligned with my gifts,
like I am going to put my head down and I'm gonna work hard. I
am not saying I could not do something hard. It was just this
feeling of being misunderstood, knowing that this wasn't the
role of a counselor, and feeling like I had no help and no
support. I was on an island.
And a lot of you feel that way right now, like what I just
described is how you go to work every day. You feel like nobody
hears you, nobody sees you, and you're doing things that are
outside of your scope and outside of what your
responsibility should be. I hope you know it can get better. This
is not everywhere. It's not every school. It's not every
administration. This was not my experience forever. It partially
had to do with the principal, and when the principal shifted
and the district initiative shifted, everyone started
advocating for counselors a little bit more to have less of
those non counseling duties.
I will say I did during this season, put my head down and do
what I was supposed to. And there was a push to have
administrators come in and take that role of testing coordinator
off of the counselors, but it was a slow grind. Let me tell
you, like even though they put the title on an assistant
principal, they didn't want to be trained. They didn't want to
do it either. It was so hard, a real slow burn, to get that
responsibility off of our counselors.
Next, I remember a very specific time when my principal, who I
loved so dearly, sat us down for a meeting. It was like our team
meeting, and he was going to come to it. He was sort of
coming to us as a mouthpiece for the teachers, but I also knew
that he was a huge advocate for us as counselors, and he wanted
to support us, but he basically sat us down and said, okay, the
teachers want you to have duty in the hallways just like they
have. They feel like it's unfair that you all are not doing that
part of the job that they are doing, that they have to give
out some of their planning time to do it. And he basically was
like, tell me why you cannot do this. Like he knew in his heart
that we shouldn't be doing it, but he was like, I need
something to go back to them and tell them.
So we laid it all out there. We said we are doing crisis
management. If we're on duty in the hallway and we have to leave
because there's a crying student, or there is an absolute
emergency where there's a safety issue with a student, if you
want us to leave that spot in the hallway that we are supposed
to be manning and watching and checking passes, if we walk
away, are you okay with that? Is that okay that you're not gonna
have that person there? Because chances are we're gonna get tied
over in a meeting, or we're gonna be in a crisis situation,
or we're not going to be able to report to that spot. So if
you're okay with that, then sure. And we said we have a very
specialized skill set that not anyone could just jump in and
handle that crisis situation with a student who is wanting to
end their life. Okay, if you have another body who could
stand in the hallway and check hall passes, that feels a little
more generalized that I'm gonna say anyone could do.
And then, as counselors, it feels like we just have to be
available for walk ins. You know, we have people scheduling
appointments, and that would be really hard to do, to block off
a big chunk of time every single day to sit in the hallway when
there are parents who want to come in and talk to us, or who
are making appointments to come in and talk to us. It just felt
silly to have to say to us that, yeah, you must be available to
people who are walking in. You must be available for people to
be able to make appointments with you, but then to say, Nope,
you're actually going to use your time sitting in the hallway
here.
So we got out of that real quick. It was something that we
had never had on our plate before. And then when it was
brought to our principal to potentially put that on our
plate, we came in with a PowerPoint ready to say why we
couldn't do it and what we would be doing instead. And he went
back and reported, and they backed down when they realized,
yeah, I don't want to be the one having those conversations with
students in case of emergency.
So he, our principal, walked away from that and basically
said, okay, then I want you to be visible when you can. I want
teachers to see you in the hallways and to be talking with
those students when you're not doing this duty position. I want
you to be with students all the other times. Don't be the person
who's sitting in their office just doing all the paperwork. I
want you to get to do what we hired you to do, which, let me
tell you, feels really good as a counselor, to have that kind of
support. He basically was like, I want you to be doing the
things that make your program a ramp worthy program. He said, I
will cut these non counseling duties if I can have you working
on board, everybody on board to have a program that really
serves students that we can be proud of.
And I think it's inevitable that in high school, you're going to
have a lot of those administrative duties, more so
than elementary and middle. Now, that's a generalized assumption.
My only experience in elementary and middle is in my internships.
I have never had a full time job in either of those. But my
perception is that high school has a little bit more of your
basic paperwork, your spreadsheets to manage, reports
to fill out and submit, letters of recommendation to write, 504s
to manage, write, print, schedule, disseminate. You can
keep that list going, I'm sure. I've never been in one of those
other level roles, but I'm pretty confident that high
school counseling does have a lot of this.
So let's first accept that like that's gonna come with the
territory. But let's also be proud that we get to work with
the coolest students. I know I'm a little biased here. I won't be
too braggy that high school counseling is the absolute best.
But if you're listening to this, chances are you probably think
this is true too. I would gladly take a few of those type of non
counseling duties, the administrative paperwork type
stuff, if it meant that in exchange I got to keep working
with teenagers. I think it's a small trade off that I'm willing
to take.
Okay, so how do we advocate for our time as a counselor with
administration? It could totally depend on where your
administration is coming from, what the culture at your school
is like, but I think if you are going to have the opportunity to
get a new principal or any new administrators, this is your
shot. I don't want you to miss it. You only get one shot. Okay?
You have a new principal, you have a new administrator. Use
the beginning of the year presentation that I have in my
TPT store and offer to do that in front of your principal or
your administrators in some sort of team meeting. If they can
hear about what you do and what your role is, everybody's gonna
be clearer up front.
I also like to think about sharing my calendar with these
people, these important stakeholders, and you know this
means that you actually have to use your calendar. You can't
just share a blank calendar with them. But when you have that
sort of transparency with your stakeholders, and I'm talking
the people that you're working closely with, those
administrators, maybe department heads, I don't know who needs to
see it. You could have a different one for the public
that's public facing, and a different one for administrators
or your clerk in your office. But I found that the more
transparent I was or the more outspoken I was about trying to
be open about what I do, then the more I was able to dispel
myths about what was actually going on behind the scenes. Of
course, you cannot be sharing what you're talking about and
who you're seeing, but I just found that by being as
transparent as I could be within Re. Reason that people couldn't
assume what I was doing was what they made up in their mind.
And I totally understand being on the other side of this
mentality, like I've been the person who assumes all the way
down the storyline and make something up until I come up
with what I think is rational in my head, because I don't have
all the information at hand. And I would even say in my marriage,
a phrase that we use a lot in our marriage, is believing the
best. We try and believe the best in each other. And I think
that that can be taken into the workplace too.
Now I do know not everybody is going to do this job or their
job in a school with complete integrity, some people are going
to be difficult to work with, like, that is a real thing, and
so that is hard to believe the best of those people. But I want
to try and give people the benefit of the doubt. I want to
hope that people are going to work with integrity and are
going to say what they are doing behind the scenes. So hear me
out. This is not a plea for toxic positivity. I know not
everybody is going to be the best. I know that we cannot
believe the best about everybody, but this is a mental
shift. If you find yourself always thinking the worst about
somebody's work ethic or what they're doing, if you haven't
taken the time or energy to understand the bigger picture or
understand what makes them tick and what kinds of things they
like doing as a counselor, like if you're assuming the worst
about your teammates or your administrators, I think doing
some deep digging into your own thoughts and opinions about them
and their work standard would be a good thing to consider.
When I talked about sharing your calendar and using your
calendar, if you found yourself saying, Well, I don't really use
my calendar, and that is a struggle for you, that time
management and calendar piece of your department and your role is
a struggle, then I would encourage you to go back and
listen to the episode I did just a couple weeks ago with my
friend Casey Ranger. She had some great tips about time
management and batching things and blocking off your schedule
and getting things done. So I'll definitely link that in the show
notes for you.
The last strategy I want to mention about your non
counseling tasks and how to just manage them make them a little
bit more bearable, would be outsourcing them. Of course, we
would like to outsource them out of our building, not even have
to think about them, outsource them out of our brain, and not
even have to bring them to the forefront. But I'm talking about
using people in your building who are either offering to help
or who could take on something else that is more aligned with
what they're doing. And so think about some of the tasks that
maybe you do that aren't directly student centered, or
that take away from the time that you could be using with
students directly. And then think about the people around
you who you could help bring in to help support those things.
So here's one big area that I felt like I could take off my
plate if I could come up with somebody to help me. Some of
those 504 duties. We know them. We love them. When I looked at
my calendar and how I was spending my time, this took up a
huge chunk of time, and it felt like parts of this were pretty
repetitive, like emailing teachers, scheduling a meeting,
confirming with parents, sending calendar invites. And so here is
where I brought in my counseling clerk. We had a clerk or
secretary who sat in our office, and you know, she could do a lot
of tasks for us that were not counseling related, but
supported us as counselors. Now, I had to be organized on my end
to make this happen, and so when she was doing things like
scheduling, she was having to look at my calendar, so I had to
keep that up to date, and I had to put in every meeting that I
had and every appointment that I had and when I was going off
campus to train for something, in order for her to know when I
was available to make that happen.
This was a game changer for me. I just felt like I was doing a
lot of behind the scenes communication, which I don't
mind doing. I like to communicate, but it was just a
lot, and it felt like something that someone else could do if I
found the right person with the right skill set. And let me tell
you, our clerk was the right person. She made it happen. It
made those meetings so much more bearable, because when I was
sitting down to actually concentrate on my 504
responsibilities, do you know what it was? It was sitting down
with the student, the parent and a teacher, where I was being the
one who was running the meeting, talking, kind of doing
counseling type things in a meeting type setting. All of the
behind the scenes stuff was taken care of by someone else.
Another thing that came to light when I looked at my calendar
where I thought, hmm, maybe somebody else could help us with
this, was having to constantly stop what we were doing as we
were enrolling new students and going and giving them a tour.
Now, I love walking around the school with new students and
chit chatting and showing them around, but at the beginning of
each semester, when you have lots of students waiting to
enroll, and they are trying to get into class, it almost felt
like a frivolous thing to walk them around the school. And I
say that like if I put myself in the student's shoes, yes, that
is very important. I would want to walk around and know where
the auditorium was or where the cafeteria was or where the
bathroom was. But is there somebody else in the school who
could help with that.
So we thought maybe we could have some students partner with
us that feels like something that is not super private,
doesn't violate any FERPA violations. We would have
students come in and essentially be a peer leader or peer mentor,
be a friend to a new student, and help connect them to clubs
and the basic things that they might need to know around the
school. It was really cool to watch those friendships blossom
by equipping students to be leaders in the school and be
welcoming faces, smiling faces to new students.
So in the past, where I would have to sit down with a family,
make a schedule, then take them and walk them all the way around
the school, I could almost pass them off to a student. I'm
helping equip a student to be a bolder, more confident leader in
our school, and I'm helping these two students connect and
make a peer relationship happen. Hence peer leaders were born. I
have a whole episode on how to build out a program like this,
and a TPT resource that has all the important pieces done for
you. So I'll link those in the show notes as well. I think
that's a very practical how to episode, if you're thinking,
wow, I could equip some students in my school to do something
like this for other new students.
And then lastly, a place that I don't want you to miss in terms
of outsourcing, would be taking on a counseling intern. If you
have not taken on a high school counseling intern, yet, this may
be the sign that you need to do so. Yes, it is real work to
teach someone and to give them feedback and to have them kind
of shadowing you and taking the reins on some things. However,
there are so many benefits to furthering the profession
through your influence as a supervisor to an intern. I talk
all about this in episode 134, what I learned from supervising
interns. It was not easy.
I do just want to take a minute and highlight though, when
you've got some good synergy going with you and an intern,
you can multiply yourself. And I'm not saying put all the non
counseling duties on them. That's definitely not the goal,
but you can use them to multiply your direct counseling duties,
because you're in it to make an impact with students, right? And
so if you care about making those direct hours happen more
for your caseload, with an intern, you can do more
classroom lessons, more small groups, more individual
counseling sessions.
You also get the perspective of someone who's eager to learn
right now, and then, you also have their connections to
troubleshoot anything that you're going through with a
student, with their professor, their peers and you. You get to
be learning too. You get to continue being a student when
you have an intern alongside you.
So I want you to look for opportunities to take on more
direct counseling hours so that you can make an impact on
students just like you signed up to do. This doesn't mean all of
your non counseling duties will disappear altogether, but if
you're making small efforts to shift your own mentality around
your transparency, around your calendar and your
responsibilities, you may win over some of those big decision
makers to get them to realize you are best serving students in
the places where you are especially trained to serve
students as a counselor, managing sensitive issues that
not everyone in the school is equipped to do.
If you're a new or aspiring high school counselor, I'd encourage
you to bop over and grab the new counselor playlist that I put
together for you. It's a list of curated podcast episodes that I
think will be perfect for you as you're embarking on a new
journey. I have that listed in the show notes for you. If you
are a veteran and this episode was just refreshing for you, a
breath of fresh air so that you can think through some of those
tedious old tasks you do, and then envision a world that has
less of them, I'm so glad you listened to this episode. I hope
it serves you in some new ways. A great free resource for you
would be those copy and paste advocacy email templates I have
for you to send over to your administrators and to your staff
that advocate for what you do. I challenge you to send them to
your people and see what happens next. Go to
counselorclique.com/challenge and you can get those email
templates sent right to your email.
Thanks for listening. I'll see you for another episode 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 podcast, 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.