Classroom Lesson - Career

This week, 1st grade students explored the tools that people use to do their jobs. We rummaged through a bag of tools, including a computer mouse, wrench, calculator, and protective earwear, to think about how different kinds of work require different tasks, skills, and tools.

How Schools Are Becoming the New Safety Nets for New Hampshire's Neediest Students

NHPR reported about the incredible range of services that schools in NH need to provide students in order to meet their growing needs.

"Districts are initiating these extra services with a broader goal than just helping kids get through the school day: Research has shown that stress, from poverty or other pressures at home, can limit students’ chances of succeeding academically and, ultimately, their long-term quality of life."

Read or listen to the whole story here.

How to Teach GRIT

For the past few years, grit has been a popular term among educators and parents. Grit refers to traits like perseverance, self-control, and conscientiousness that contribute to student success. Angela Duckworth's TED talk about grit gained a lot of attention a few years ago and the interest in how to build "gritty" students remains. 

Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed, was recently interviewed about grit on NPR's All Things Considered. 

Listen to or read the full interview here. 

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley

In his TED talk, Ken Robinson suggests that order for human life to flourish, the conditions must be 1) naturally different and diverse, 2) curious, and 3) creative. He humorously points out that the current state of education in America contradicts these principles. 

"The point is that education is not a mechanical system. It's a human system. It's about people, people who either do want to learn or don't want to learn." 

Click here to view the TED talk video.

Keene summit urges community to stop stigmatizing addicts

From the Keene Sentinel, 5/18/16:

According to Linda Rubin, director of Healthy Monadnock, Healthy Community Initiative,

"Research shows that reducing the stigma associated with substance use disorders can change the minds of policymakers to create laws and allocate resources that invest in helping people get the help they need in the community, making it possible for them to regain their families, their lives and their jobs.”

Read the full story here.

Career Awareness - Classroom Guidance

In 3rd grade, students have been exploring careers through the website Paws in Jobland. Students took a quiz on their interests, and based on how they answered the questions, the site provides a list of career clusters as well as specific jobs that might appeal to the them. 

Then they learned about the purpose of a resume and practiced writing their own. Many students have plans to distribute their resume to neighbors and family members in hopes of a summer job!  

C:A2.6 Learn how to write a résumé

Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges

From Psychology Today 9/22/15:

"We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to learn how to solve their own problems. They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realize they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention." 

Read the full article here.

Schools Struggle to Cope With Rising Mental Health Needs

From the Boston Globe 5/17/16:

"Over the last decade, many schools have seen the number of [students hospitalized for mental health reasons] grow from just a few a year to upwards of several dozen, often transforming guidance offices into de facto psychiatric wards, educators say."

Read the full article here.

It's The Hard Days That Determine Who You Are

From the 5/15/16 Boston Globe:

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of “Lean In,’’ delivered the commencement speech at the University of California, Berkeley, on Saturday.

Sandberg's inspirational speech was about resilience and how to learn and grow from the inevitable challenges of life.

"Psychologist Martin Seligman found that there are three P’s — personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence — that are critical to how we bounce back from hardship. The seeds of resilience are planted in the way we process the negative events in our lives."

Photo credit: Jennifer Leahy

Read her full remarks here.

President Obama - Now is the time (2013)

In 2013, President Obama put forward a specific plan called Now is the Time aimed at protecting children and communities by reducing gun violence. Among other actions, the plan calls for making schools safer and increasing access to mental health services. The President's plan specifically mentions the important role school counselors play in addressing school safety. 

"[School counselors'] roles as teachers and counselors enable them to develop trusting relationships with students that can result in threats being detected and crises averted before they occur. School psychologists, social workers, and counselors can help create a safe and nurturing school climate by providing mental health services to students who need help." (p 11). 

Read the full plan here.

School Counselors - Implementing the Common Core

On December 18, 2012 Achieve published a brief titled Implementing the Common Core Standards: The Role of School Counselor. The document describes the important role that school counselors can have in schools that leads to success for all students.

"As a part of a school team consisting of administrators, teachers, parents, and students, school counselors have a critical role to play in the successful implementation of the new standards. School counselors are uniquely positioned to influence and implement many of the schoolwide goals and initiatives that all students are college- and career-ready." (p7).

Click here to read the entire brief.

River Center - Survey

The River Center has partnered with PES to offer Parenting Workshops.
Please take this brief survey to help gather information about opportunities that may be of interest to you! Click here to take the survey
Thank you for offering your input!

Keene Hospital Mental Health Unit Closing

Local mental health services are becoming more scarce. According to a story today in the Keene Sentinel, after July 1, there will no longer be inpatient mental health treatment at Dartmouth Hitchcock / Cheshire Medical Center in Keene. The article explains that the closure is due to a lack of psychiatrists.

Don Caruso, the hospital's CEO and chief medical officer, said that with this closure patients will have to travel much further for treatment.

"Brattleboro Retreat may be the closest one, but there are a lot of limitations in terms of what those facilities are willing to take,” Caruso said. “[Patients] could end up in Massachusetts or on the Seacoast; it could be very far away. For children it’s very far away.”

Read the full article here.

Families - Classroom Guidance

We are learning about families in 1st and 2nd grade classroom guidance lessons. There are so many wonderful books for children that beautifully illustrate the diverse and complex makeups of today's families.

In 1st grade, we read Families, Families, Families, and students made bar graphs to show the different sizes of their families.

In 2nd grade, we read All Families Are Special, and students did writing and drawing about different family traditions.

PS:A2.4 Recognize, accept and appreciate ethnic and cultural diversity
PS:A2.5 Recognize and respect differences in various family configurations

Follow me on Twitter

Twitter handle: @PESCounseling 

The Effects of Screen Time

Technology is the way of the future! Kids are overexposed to screen time!
The debate about the presence of technology in our lives puts people all over the spectrum. The article Screentime is Making Kids Moody, Crazy, and Lazy by Victoria Dunkley in Psychology Today suggests 6 ways electronic screen time may be making kids angry, depressed, and unmotivated.

School Counselors Want You To Know

Jessica Lahey made headlines last year with her bestseller The Gift of Failure which encourages parents to avoid "overparenting" in order to help raise resilient children.

This week, Jessica Lahey's article 3 Things School Counselors Want You To Know appeared on the New York Times blog. It's a quick read that sums up a lot about what  it means to be a school counselor today.

An excerpt from the post:

Don’t call them “guidance counselors.” The proper title is “school counselor,” she explained in an email. “School counselors chafe at the outdated term ‘guidance counselor,’ a relic from the past that no longer reflects our role,” she wrote. The profession was vocationally oriented and counselors had inconsistent educational backgrounds and levels of certification until the American School Counselor Association published “The ASCA National Model: A Foundation for School Counseling Programs” in 2003 in an effort to standardize the field.

Welcome!

This blog is designed to help promote awareness around issues related to school counseling and to share information about the counseling program at Peterborough Elementary School.

School counselors help students with academic achievement, career awareness, and personal/social skill development in accordance with guidelines established by the American School Counselor Association.