Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 10

Wow! When the counseling resource guides came in the mail, our team was so excited and each picked out a different book to get started. There is such a wealth of knowledge in this collection, that it will take years for us to try out all of the strategies.

My name is Kelly Gentry, and I am the lead counselor at Manatee. I really enjoy doing small group counseling because I can use my time more effectively by teaching emotional coping stratgeies to multiple students at a time. So, the book from our new library that I chose was "School Counselor Resource Series: Fostering Resilience & Strength." Our district has had a recent push for fostering "grit" in our students and so I felt resiliency skills are in line with the district mission as well. I chose ten 8th graders to be in my resiliency counseling group. We met 8 times during lunch over the course of two weeks. A pre/post test showed that the students felt an overall 52% greater mastery over coping skills. 100% of the group reported prepared to handle adversity after completing the group, whereas only 20% reported feeling prepared at the start of the group. My expectation was also to track discipline referral counts for these students as another data point, however, since we are now work-from-home, there is no dicipline data to track. However, I can at least see that for the most part, the group members are all completing their online assignments and at least maintaining if not not improving their classroom grades. 

The other two counselors in our team chose "The Self Esteem Workbook for Teens," and "Coping Skills for Kids Workbook". Their intentions were to use these in their individual counseling sessions with students. I do not have any data from them on how many students they were able to reach with these programs (that's why I put 10+ as the number of students impacted). Unfortunately, these two resources and most of our new library is locked away at the school and we are not allowed in to get them. I did happen to bring home "Behind The Counselor's Door" and am currently reading that to gain new insight for professional learning.

Most notably of all the outcomes, is that our counseling program just won a national award through the American School Counselor Association (ASCA). The award is called RAMP, which stands for Recognized ASCA Model Program. We are the first school in all of South West Florida to earn this prestigious honor. Although the application was already in the works when our grant was recieved, there are two books that helped us polish our program: "The ASCA National Model, 4th edition" and "The ASCA National Model Implementation Guide". These are the blueprints for establishing and maintaing a data-driven, comprehensive school counseling program. Schools need only to follow these two books and submit the application to earn the RAMP award. Having the latest version of these guides will ensure that Manatee can maintain it's RAMP status for years to come.