November: Wellness
My November Bulletin Board:

November Bulletin Board/Full View

November's monthly counseling theme was wellness.  During November, I partnered with our school's 2nd grade music teacher to conduct anger management lessons. Each of us were able to utilize our areas of expertise to co-teach the lesson.  The instruction began with a review of anger.  I described anger as a secondary emotion because people become angry as a result of experiencing such feelings as frustration, anxiety, fear, or jealousy.  Anger is important to understand because students are at risk of getting hurt, hurting another student, or getting into trouble when they lose control of their thoughts and actions.

November Bulletin Board: Wellness

The key to controlling anger is stopping the emotion before it escalates.  Students were taught to recognize their body's anger clues, such as becoming hot, clenching their fists, or getting a belly ache, so that they will know when to start using calm down techniques. Many calm down techniques were discussed, including counting to ten, imagining relaxing place, or taking a deep breath.  At this point our music teacher started to discuss the role music can have in the calm down process.  The 2nd grade students were taught the Mr. Rogers' song, "What Do You Do With The Mad That You Feel?" The song not only has a calming rhythm, it also includes helpful cool down strategies within the song's words.

At the end of the lesson students also discovered how movement and music can help relieve stress and anger with the help of boom whackers.  The release of anger can be made by safely hitting the boom whackers to make music.  Music can therapeutically release anger in multiple ways; by thinking and paying attention to music lyrics, auditorily by listening to music's sound and rhythm, or kinesthetically by dancing or making music with instruments.

Song Lyrics

2nd Grade Anger Management Music Lesson PowerPoint

Grading Kids is Not Grading Eggs Herbert W. Hunt, Ed D

     Growing up on the family farm, one of the jobs I had was grading eggs. It was a rather tedious job with a lot of repetition. Eggs were graded based upon their size and color.  Large eggs went into the Grade A boxes, medium size eggs went into the medium size boxes and so on. The egg grader weighed each egg which meant there was no possibility of making a mistake.
     When I left the farm and became a teacher I was again asked to grade, this time children. I quickly learned that it was a very complicated task. Unlike eggs, which are all the same except for color and size I immediately realized that children were much more diverse.
     Educators have wrestled with how to grade children fairly and accurately for decades. Over time there have been many different approaches. One example that stands out for me was the era of the “Bell Curve”. During this time period children were graded by assigning them to a grading group, either A, B, C, D, or F. The major premise was if there were 5 children with the grade of A there must be 5 children with the grade of F. This would occur even if all students scored 85% or higher. If this happened during egg grading some of the large eggs would have to be placed in the small or medium size container. If I did this my Dad would be very unhappy.
      I do not believe that today’s schools have solved the problem of grading students. A simple example: in elementary schools, during spelling class, students are assigned a list of twenty spelling words to learn for the week. On the pretest, Susan can spell 18 of the 20 words correctly while Herbie spells 3 of the 20 words correctly. On the final test Susan spells 20 of the 20 words correctly while Herbie spells 10 of the 20 words correctly. Susan is rewarded with and A and Herbie is rewarded with an F (only 50% correct). This is important– who learned the most but got rewarded the least? The answer is obvious but troubling. The ramifications probably will be, over time, Herbie will give up because a grade of F means he has failed, especially if he has worked to his full potential.
     Grading eggs is simple, however grading children is one of the most difficult things that educators are asked to do. Educators must develop a grading system that does not discourage children but rewards children for what they have learned.

Thanks for reading and thinking about this.

Happy Trails to You–Herb

Dr. Herbert W. Hunt

Founder, HH Education Events

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How Collaboration and Communication Enriches the Work of a School Counselor

     Since reading Sean Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens during grad school, the 7 habits have been inspirational to me.  The book gave me ideas for several classroom lessons for students ages K-12.  Although my teen years are long gone, the book’s key points and stories stuck with me.  Habit 6, synergize, is most definitely my favorite.  I believe teamwork is important at every point in life, although I find collaboration to be incredibly vital in my current position. 

     The best work days are when I have a few minutes to chat with my principals and colleagues about the needs of our students.  Discussion turns into a brainstorming session about what we can do to help.  This process has led to some amazing initiatives.  When I wanted to expand our students’ knowledge of college and career opportunities, we thought of field trip experiences for our 4^th and 5^th graders.  When we were at a loss of how to help students who we felt were getting ‘lost’ in the system because their needs did not require intervention, but we knew they would prosper with additional attention, we thought of developing a group called TLC Kids.  TLC Kids is a group of kids who could benefit from extra “Tender, Love, and Care.”  The group members meet monthly to complete an activity or lesson.  I typically include high school students to serve as mentors and to help think of fun activities.

     After talking with other school counselors about their practices, collaboration took on a whole other meaning.  I learned that teaming with my co-workers does not only result in incredibly enriching lessons for the students, but also helps me with scheduling and presenting curriculum to a larger number of students.  For the past couple of years, I have been teaming with our school’s special teachers to complete lessons that correlate with our school’s monthly counseling themes.  In gym and music, I have completed anger and stress management lessons, in art we have done self-esteem lessons utilizing student self-portraits, and in library, books were used to help present bullying prevention lessons.  This team effort has been incredible. Lesson content seems to be better understood, because students are absorbing the information through more than one sense.  The lessons are presented to click with auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners.  

     I can find myself in a rut of doing the same thing each year with the students.  I enjoy routine, and I am a creature of habit.  The lesson teaming forces me to open my horizons and learn new ways of teaching social, emotional, and academic skills to students.  Technology is a big reason for the continual change, it can be overwhelming, but also exciting.  Using technology is yet another way to capture a student’s interest.  Over the next few weeks I am going to be working on a 5^th grade study skills lesson with our school’s technology coach.  When I am collaborating with a co-worker, we can each utilize our areas of expertise and synergize to create a lesson neither one of us could have created on our own.

     As I gain experience as a school counselor, I am constantly reminded to not only collaborate within my school, but also within my community and beyond.  I need to stay up-to-date with the pulse of the all the important stakeholders, including post high school educators, business leaders, and government.  I can easily become overwhelmed when I think globally, but it is the reality of our world.  Schools need to understand job market trends and the economic needs of the community so that students can be trained accordingly.  Three major barriers to economic growth and development in all regions, especially rural areas across the U.S. include; educational institutions not producing enough skilled workers, aligning student career interests to jobs that are not projected to grow, and lack of student preparedness for needed careers.  These downfalls can be combatted with collaboration and communication amongst higher education and our regional workforce. 

     Through the help of my principals I was introduced to blogging.  Connecting to other counselors and educators from all over the world has helped me enrich my school counseling program.  I enjoy reading about new lessons and counseling techniques.  On the flip side, writing posts have helped me reflect upon what I have done.  While reviewing lesson content and structure I often think of items to add or tweak to create more valuable lessons for the students.  The process also highlights gaps in skill building content.  I want my work to remain relevant.  In order to keep my blog updated, I have to continually construct and facilitate new lessons for my students. 

     Teamwork and communication has enriched my role as a school counselor leaps and bounds.  I am only one part to a student’s whole system.  In order for a student to experience success there must be teamwork amongst all stakeholders; students, families, school-staff, post high school educators, and business leaders.  Covey’s habit 6 synergize describes this phenomena perfectly, when a team works together a solution can be created that no single member could have constructed alone.  Together is better.