Children With Aspergers

I just started working with a student who is diagnosed with Aspergers. Through working on this case I've really come to appreciate the importance of structure in the lives of my students. Taping a set schedule to the student's desk, giving breaks at set times each day and creating a behavior chart has worked wonders. I also learned that the approach needs to come from home and the school. If the students expect to be rewarded at home in addition to school the desired behavior seems to come more quickly.

Career Cafe

Yesterday marked the debut of Career Cafe at my school. This was something I stole from Danielle Schultz over at SchoolCounselorBlog. It was a huge hit. I received rave reviews from both staff and students. Thank you Danielle for this lending me this great idea!!!

Career Café is an opportunity for students in 6th - 8th grade to meet individuals from the community and learn about their careers. Students are invited to Career Café based on the results of a career interest inventory administered by the school counselor. Career Café is comprised of one 45 minute session and serves approximately thirty students in 6th - 8th grade each week.

Speakers share their career journey with students, including how they became interested in their current field, what education/training they needed, what they do in a typical day at their job, and any advice to students considering a job in their field.  

This week's guest speaker was a business banker and next week we are scheduled to have a nurse. 

Getting Pumped For PSSA's

In order to get the student body excited for PSSA's I had students in my Peace Ambassador Lunch Group (6th-8th) create signs to pump up the students for taking the exams. I let them choose from a list of different quotes I found online as well as quotes that they've heard over the years from their teacher's.

I also worked with Art Teacher on a bulletin board with tips for taking the PSSA's. These included "Tag It," "Process of Elimination," etc.

Finally I created a countdown to the PSSA board which marked how many days were left until the date of the test. Next to this board we created a chart calling out all of the students who scored "Advanced" on the Reading section of last year's PSSA exam.

Wii Cess

I created a proposal on DonorsChoose.org to fund a project called "Wii Cess." I asked for funding for two Nintendo Wii video game systems. It was a really cool experience using Donors Choose and I highly recommend it to any teachers/school counselors looking to get funding for their school projects. My proposal was funded in a couple of days. The game systems arrived a couple weeks later and I was up and running.

I came up with Wii Cess as a way to reward students at my elementary school during their Lunch/Recess periods. I was spending a ton of money buying kids treats (McDonald's, candy, etc.) for reaching the behavior and academic goals they were working on. Now that I have Wii Cess I have a way to reward them without going into my pocket each time. The students love getting to play video games in school and its something they really work for.

Wii Cess occurs every time a student reaches a goal they were shooting for (usually on Friday's). The teacher's in my building also have access to Wii Cess and I've brought the game systems to several of their classrooms so that they could reward their students for reaching a particular goal.

Student Behavior Charts

We have a kindergarten student has been really struggling with the structure of his new classroom this year. I decided to create a behavior chart to assist his teacher with tracking his behavior for each class period and rewarding him accordingly. The points earned on this chart would be tied into a reward known as "Wii Cess" that I created (I will be posting about Wii Cess later).

I wanted the chart to be something that was fun for the student to use. He really likes Pokemon so I made sure to add the logo in order to spice things up. I also wanted to make the chart fun and reusable. I found some removable velcro pieces at Target and used them as the points he could earn for each class period spent following his teacher's directions. Finally I added velcro to the back of the chart so that the teacher could store the unearned points.

My First Post

I am a second year school counselor at an elementary school (k-8) in Philadelphia. I decided to start a blog today as a fun way to capture some of the more interesting things I am doing at work. This is my first post and I look forward to sharing more lesson plans/ideas/etc. in the future.