"The Relevant Counselor: Preparing students for life, career, and the real world"

Professional Development Institutes
9:45 - 11:45 a.m.

1. School Counselor Accountability: A MEASURE of Success
Presenter: Carol Dahir

New York State’s school counselors can become key players in the academic success of students. By connecting school counseling programs to the goals of school improvement, the needs and strengths, aspirations and dreams of every K-12 student are better addressed. This workshop will provide participants with the knowledge and application skills to address the accountability and equity challenged of the No Child Left Behind legislation and to the goals of school improvement in our buildings. The comprehensive school counseling program and MEASURE bring academic, career and personal-social student development insights to the conversations around school improvement. Participants will develop a MEASURE Action Plan: a six step accountability process that uses teaming and collaboration to move data in need of improvement in areas such as promotion rates, discipline incidents, graduation rates, etc., in a positive direction. The workshop combines presentation, discussion and hands-on activities to help participants:

• Understand how to align their work with other improvement and reform initiatives
• Apply the Transforming School Counseling skills of leadership, advocacy, teaming, collaboration, and use of data to school counselor accountability
• Identify and analyze school report card data
• Develop strategies to collaborate with others to move this data in a positive direction
• Design an accountability plan to impact critical data
• Learn how to create a simple report card to publicize the success of their efforts
• Explore ways of communicating school counselor accountability with faculty and staff

2. Recognizing The Extra-Ordinary Initiatives Kids in Trouble Take
Presenter: Jodi Aman

Referencing Narrative Therapy as an approach to counseling, Aman will illustrate how to recognize initiatives that students are taking which are resistant to the problem path they may be on. In separating “the person” from “the problem” and uncovering these initiatives, it is possible to learn about the student’s unique values and commitments. Rather than telling children what to do, connecting them to their own values and commitments by making their initiatives and skills more visible, can and does affect the future choices they make. Aman will present videotaped therapeutic conversations where this “re-authoring” is occurring for demonstration and discussion. Ideas and question leads, which will help participants enter into similar conversations with children and adolescents, will be offered as part of this workshop.

3. Pondering the Counselor's Role in Shaping Our Students’ Perception of Possibility: Seeing Beyond the Distorted Lens of College Life and MTV’S “ The Real World”
Presenters: Barb Findlay and Holly Likly Juliano

This participatory session will engage counselors in self-reflection and interpersonal discussion about their role in career counseling by:

• Examining the personal and professional experiences that shaped their perception of their own possibilities
• Examining their own attitudes, beliefs, values, and goals around their role as “career counselors”
• Thinking collectively and critically about the “promise of higher education” in the global marketplace
• Playing an interactive game about the evolving job market, changing economy and skills needed to succeed in the workplace of the future
• Analyzing current realities and obstacles for effective career counseling for the future; and conceptualizing what it could/should be like
• Setting one small realistic goal for positive improvement in one’s own current program
• Contracting with a “promotion partner” to support each other through implementation