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Proven Time Saving Hacks For School Counselors

27th August 2021

School counselling is one of the sought-after jobs in the education subdivision. A school counsellor is that glue that helps the learners stick to the balance - between academic and their personal journeys. Teacher training institutes are now seeing a sudden increase in counselling course enrolments. With the world getting smaller with just a click away, this has also resulted in a lot of digital fatigue.

This yield more mental struggle, especially for the children- the school goers. Teaching professionals have now taken up this initiative to explore and venture into the field of teaching as well as counselling. Counselling approaches and strategies have now advanced to cater to this growing issue as well.

Gone are the days when we used to think that a school counsellor has a lot of free time and it is a job that is way too sluggish to expect a growth. Traditionally school counsellors were either seen in privatised institutions or NGO workers who would do school visits for their various projects and surveys.

The constant awareness about mental health, people has now become conscious about the existing reality of mental exhaustion and how it affects academics. This has given a rise to hiring school counsellors overnight.

Now the communities and school districts are wanting school counsellors where the learners can feel safe to discuss their personal and emotional sides that are directly connected to their academic abilities.

This means counsellors would have tight schedules and a proper structuring of their sessions are a must.

Here we have three golden tips that would assist in staying prepared way ahead of time.

1. At the beginning of the year, file out permission slips for each grade. To make them more specific you can categorise using colours, use letters with the grade to mark the strength of the groups. For example, if it is grade 4 in blue and grade 3 in yellow, now you have the different group sizes. So, for bigger groups of say about 8-10 students you can have the code A; so that is Grade3A, Grade 4A and so on. If it is a smaller group of 3-4 learners the code can be letter B. Categorising in this way saves a lot of time. You can do this at the beginning of the academic year. If you have individual sessions you can categorise them the same way. This way your rapport building sessions for the first 2 months does not seem chaotic as now you do not have go around searching for students and student data.

2. Mark one day of the week and keep it free for yourself. For example, keep all your Wednesdays or Fridays free from any group or individual sessions. That way you’ll have a scope to reflect on your skills and evaluate learner progress from the previous sessions. This also leaves a few hours from your schedule all to yourself to stay prepared for the next days to follow, preferably the next week. 

3. Preparing the lesson plans, rapport building activities, counselling strategies, anticipated issues, etc. can all be looked at for the upcoming week. Keep the photocopies of the materials ready. If needed, speak to the homeroom teachers if they want you to address something to any specific group or individual. This helps to stay prepared and do not let your ideas crash in times of some crises. Stay prepared!

4. Create a template where you can write and set your schedule for the entire week. Set schedules as per the size of the groups, the grade of the groups and other categories that you might feel would make it a vivid work of reference. Keep spaces and allow optional plans if the primary one seems to not fit in.

Only the times where there is a 3 hurt emergency situation, the schedule can be compromised. This includes, if one is trying to physically hurt themselves or hurt by others or trying to hurt others. Sticking to the schedule not only helps you to remember your work in a timely manner but also it helps keep yourself armed with ideas when such crises are frequent among others.

In conclusion, it can be only be understood that being a school counsellor is a tricky job. Not only a counselling course is important but also applying these time saving hacks help you go a long way in your counselling career.