My Three Takeaways from a Personalized Learning Conference

I love reading blogs by others.  I learn so much and am thankful for what they share.  I recently read a blog post by @web20classroom, Steven W. Anderson, and this post by @bobby__dodd that encouraged me to reflect on a conference I attended today and to write a blog post.  I am also reading Seth Godin's book, The Icarus Deception, and in the book he discusses creating "art" for others and "shipping" your art.  In this case, my "art" is sharing takeaways from the conference and the "shipping" is writing this blog.  

The educators I spent the day with were energized around learning more about personalized learning. Personalized learning is defined in many ways, but at the core of personalized learning is understanding and meeting the needs of the learner in order for the learner to be successful in school and in life. 

My three takeaways from today are:  

1.  We need to stop blaming people for not meeting the needs of today's learners; we have a system design problem. To prepare students for their future, we have to fix the system. The education system of today was not created for the needs of our world today.

2.  When educators are talking about the "why" of personalized learning, they are talking about the need for students to learn 21st century skills like collaboration, problem solving, innovation, critical thinking.  Educators from today also shared the need for students to be more engaged in school and by meeting their needs and personalizing their learning, we will keep them engaged and excited about coming to school.  

3.  It is essential that school leaders are involved in this work from the very beginning.  Without their support, the system will not be changed. Superintendents and principals must be the drivers of change in the school system. 

I am hopeful that through the passion of others that systems will be changed to meet the needs of all learners so they will thrive and be true leaders of tomorrow! 

If you haven't started a blog yet get started today and if you have, please share your "art" with the rest of us so we can learn from you!  

Some of my favorite blogs include:

Seth Godin's Blog
Passion, Purpose, Pride by Jimmy Casas
The Principal of Change by George Couros
Principal's Blog by Bobby Dodd
A Principal's Reflection by Eric Sheninger
Finding Common Ground by Peter DeWitt
Personalize Learning by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey

Valuable Career Advising Tools

College and career counseling is essential for students to gain equal access to information and schools must be creative in finding ways for all students to receive post-secondary counseling.  It cannot be done in college prep classes only and cannot begin during the senior year.  Students and families need to have access to information earlier and earlier so they are aware and can, with the help of the school, prepare for college or the workforce after high school.  Being a former school counselor, and I will always consider myself a school counselor, my colleague introduces me as “a recovering School Counselor; it’s a 12-step process”, I understand the demands of the job.  It is up to us to make a difference and advocate for our students.

With the testing requirements, counselors are already bogged down with administrative duties along with other non-counseling duties.  It is important that administrators realize that counselors can positively affect students’ post-secondary aspirations and attainment.  To do this, the counseling department priorities need to change.  Counselors need to spend more on direct time with students and less on administrative and non-counseling duties.

The Ohio Department of Education in partnership with the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation and Ohio Board of Regents has developed Career Connections.  The Career Connections Framework provides an overview to school districts for developing implementation plans for career exploration. A school district Career Connections plan includes strategies across grades K-12 that support the career development of all students.

Tools and Approaches for College and Career Advising

Career Advising should begin in the middle school years, if not earlier.  The Career Connections Framework provides a model Student Success Plan for grades 6-12.  The model plan includes Tools and Assessments, Student Activities, School Activities and Resources using the OhioMeansJobs K-12 tool.  This model plan serves as a comprehensive career development experience for students and can be customized by districts.  Review the Student Success Plan here.

OhioMeansJobs K-12 is a no-cost, on-line career development tool.  This tool replaces the previous OCIS tool that school counselors utilized for career development.  This tool allows counselors, teachers, parents and students to explore career interests, research career options and evaluate education and training programs.  Watch this video for information on this free, helpful tool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbqwVctlLQs

I hope you find time to look over these resources.  I will share other methods I have used at the high school level but I wanted to first share these resources as they are very useful to the busy school counselor.

#ASCA14 #NOTATASCA14 Day Two Post

Here are day two resources from #ASCA14 and some great quotes:

"All you have to do counselors, is rise each time you fall!" @OfficialStedman #asca14 #scchat @sch_counselor

Whenever you get tired, frustrated, overwhelmed think about the extraordinary ripple effect of your work because it is real #FLOTUS #asca14

Dads Matter! Give them a chance in your school! Free Training 4 U: http://www.fathers.com/watchdogs  #ASCA14 #scchat #asca #PTA14 #PTA #school @FLOTUS @WatchDOGSRadio

Press coverage of @FLOTUS speech. http://ow.ly/yFeo4  #asca14 #ReachHigher @ASCAtweets

#asac14 The school counselor as a leader 4 improving school climate. Follow my notes this morning! http://schoolcounselorspace.blogspot.com/2014/07/asca14-school-counselor-as-leader-for.html … #scchat @FSabens

Use this resource to learn more about SEL: http://jcshakespeare.com/asca/  #asca14 #schoolcounseling @CMSLisaNewman

Have departments note what class prepares student 4 16 career clusters. #asca14 #scchat #notatasca 14 http://wvhs.ipsd.org/uploads/Curriculum/mini-guide_revised_2012-direction.pdf
@tracy_pressley

Branding & Marketing presentation & links uploaded to TCG! Thanks for coming to our session! http://ow.ly/yFuCE  #ASCA14 #NotAtASCA14 @CounselingGeek


There are LOTS more resources on the app and on Twitter.  Enjoy!

#ASCA14 #NOTATASCA14

I got this idea from a blogger, #julieallthat, who is posting tweets that caught her eye from the #ISTE2014 conference and she is not at the conference, like me.  I am not at the #ASCA14 conference.  She had tons of resources all in one blog.  Her blog is http://alspachreflectivelearning.blogspot.com/2014/06/iste2014-stalking-day-two-post-that.html.

Here are my takeaways from the #ASCA14 tweets.

Visit @apoovey's blog for more tech tools http://bit.ly/PooveyTech  #ASCA14 #notatasca14
@NCSCA

@GoAnimate is a great tech tool for Personal/Soc small group ending projects. (i.e. Bullying videos). Thx @apoovey #ASCA14 #notatasca14 @NCSCA


http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc  Recommended website for book topics for book clubs. #asca14 @tmscounselor

My notes via live feed from the #asca14 Creative Goal Setting Session-Vision Boards http://schoolcounselorspace.blogspot.com/2014/06/asca14-get-creative-with-goal-setting.html … #scchat @FSabens

ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success! http://www.schoolcounselor.org/asca/media/asca/home/MindsetsBehaviors.pdf … #scchat #asca14 @sch_counselor

@ChrisWood415: Check out http://www.guysread.com  for book lists for young males! #ASCA14

@ChrisWood415: Powerful video presented by @juliavtaylor "Run like a girl" #ASCA14 #Powerful #Inspiring http://youtu.be/XjJQBjWYDTs 

The Trevor Project has lots of support & services for LGBTQ youth. http://www.TheTrevorProject.org 
@Dwyer_Guidance

Free app to help students relax and de-escalate anxiety https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.t2health.breathe2relax … #asca14 #scchat @TheRVK

Croak-It allows you to create a 30 second audio message http://croak.it/  #scchat #asca14 @sch_counselor

@JCHSCounseling: Holy cow! What great FREE resources and wisdom from @rsabella #asca14 http://bit.ly/asca14-sabella

@FSabens Parents & school counselors existing together http://schoolcounselorspace.blogspot.com/2014/06/asca14-parents-school-counselors.html … #asca14 #scchat

#STEM Career Toolkit for #Counselors to reach Students by relating & appealing to interests | by @NAPEquity http://napequity.org/counselors  #asca14 @MeaganPollock

@ChrisWood415 Want more notes from Branding and Marketing session at #ASCA14 check out @FSabens awesome thoughts - http://schoolcounselorspace.blogspot.com/2014/06/asca14-branding-marketing-your-program.html …

Proud School Counselor

In an earlier post I discussed my goal of meeting with all of my assigned students.  I have met with all Seniors.  As a result of meeting with the Seniors and hearing what colleges or what branch of military they were accepted to, I created this bulletin board to showcase their accomplishments.  This is not all of the acceptances and I will be adding more to this board (hopefully this week).  I am very proud of these students and consider myself lucky to work with them to reach their goals.

As for the rest of the grades, I am getting close.  The minute meetings are making it easy to reach my goal. Creating the 4-year Plans with the freshmen takes much longer than the minute meetings.  Testing and scheduling have taken quite a bit of my time lately, but I am confident that I will have met with all of my students by the end of the year.

I will post another update closer to the end of the school year regarding my accomplishment with this goal.

Good luck to all of you in reaching your goals for this year!

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!

Sharing and Learning at EdCamp Columbus

Today I attended an EdCamp in Columbus, Ohio.  If you don't know what an EdCamp is, it is an "unconference".  It is a participant-driven, FREE meeting.  Participants drive the topics and are encouraged to share their knowledge.

At first, I was hesitant about attending because I'm a School Counselor. I thought it really wouldn't be beneficial for me.  I was wrong.  I'm so glad I was encouraged by my husband to attend and interact with all the great attendees.

There were several school counselor's in attendance.  One counselor lead a session on how to deal with personal/social issues in the classroom.  This was a great opportunity for us to remind teachers that school counselors can help them deal with these types of issues with their students.  Hopefully, we reminded teachers that we are there to help and they will go back to their school and connect the students with their counselors.

Not only was I able to promote my profession during this EdCamp but I was able to meet, interact and listen to some amazing, passionate and caring educators.  The students who benefit from these people are very lucky.  Everyone came out and spent their entire Saturday sharing and learning from others to improve education and learning for students.

On my way home I thought how it might be fun to have an EdCamp for school counselors.  Then  I thought how important it is that we have this interaction with teachers, administrators, technology coordinators, etc like I did today.  So instead of having an EdCamp for school counselors, my hope is that more school counselors attend EdCamps to share and learn.

To learn more about EdCamps or to find one near you go to: edcamp.org