Sometimes We Need to Remind Ourselves

This spring has been so busy with all the snow days we had this year, it feels like we are playing "catch up" twice as much as we are normally doing this time of year.  We have testing, scheduling, making sure seniors are on track for graduation, working with our students for social/emotional issues, grades and academic plans.  I feel like I haven't been available to my students as I've been so busy recently.

I am not going to deny that sometimes I need to remind myself that I am here for the students.  When I finally make it back to my office and try to catch up on email and voice mail, it's like the students know I'm back in my office and they start filing in.  The other day I caught myself getting a little irritated that I didn't have a few minutes to get caught up.  I had to stop and remind myself why I'm really here.  I'm here for them!

The emails and voice mails can wait until the students were gone for the day.  The paperwork can wait.  The students have been waiting long enough while I've been out.  They have real issues they need help with and I feel honored that they come to me to provide them with academic guidance or help with personal issues.

As I have stated in another post, my goal for this year is to meet with all of the students assigned to me. Lately, I've been starting to feel like I'm not going to make it.  While helping students schedule in the computer labs a couple of weeks ago, we had time left at the end so I decided to use my time wisely and do the Minute Meetings with my students.  They were working on different assignments and I called them up for the Minutes Meetings.  I really enjoyed being able to use that time to meet with them and am looking forward to meeting with my Sophomores tomorrow and Wednesday.  I hope the teachers keep the students in the labs to work so I can continue with the Minute Meetings.

School Counselors need to be creative sometimes when trying to reach our goals to meet the needs of our students.  I have a feeling that I'm going to need to get a lot more creative to reach my goal of meeting with all of my students by the end of the year.  Wish me luck!