Reading List!

There have been a lot of new studies and new information pertinent to the role of the school counselor. Please add these to your reading lists for this winter break!!

College Admissions Stress and Support

While some students continue to apply to colleges, many students are preparing to hear back from the colleges through the many Early Action or Early Decision programs available.  Where these programs used to attract only a small percentage of applicants, some colleges now admit up to 50 percent of their class through these programs. Since many of these colleges are among the highly selective colleges, students report a higher level of stress both waiting for these decisions, and hearing their results.  Counselor are trying to meet these needs in a wider variety of ways, including lunch time programs, after school seminars, and newsletters and columns on how parents can support students through this challenging time (O'Connor, HuffingtonPost).  

An Introduction to School Counselors

While school counselors are often seen as the building professionals in charge of testing and schedule changes, these more visible parts of the job often overcrowd the other work of counselors.  This is one of the reasons many people don’t understand why large counselor caseloads can prevent counselors from completing their work with students.  This introductory overview of a counselor’s job puts to rest some long-held beliefs, and creates an opportunity to see how schools can make the most of their counselor’s skills (Lahey, New York Times). 

Resources to Use

• The St. Louis Fed's Econlowdown Teacher Portal. The Econlowdown Teacher Portal is a tool to enhance instruction by providing free online courses, videos, and podcasts for students about economics, personal finance, and money. The St Louis Fed also has print lessons, curricula, readings, PowerPoints, and SMART and Promethean Board materials for pre-K through college classrooms that can be searched by grade level and easily downloaded for free.
• Kindergarten Observation Tool. A new study from the Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest examined the construct validity of the New Mexico’s Kindergarten Observation Tool and provides evidence of the tool’s validity and reliability. The study found support for using the Kindergarten Observation Tool to measure two distinct domains of students’ knowledge and skills: cognitive school readiness and noncognitive school readiness.  
• ASCD Leadership Institute for Legislative Advocacy. Join educators from across the country to learn about the new administration and new leadership in Congress and hear from education policy experts about the education policy issues to be addressed in 2018. ASCD's Leadership Institute for Legislative Advocacy provides a unique venue to network with educators from around the nation who share an interest in education policy and advocacy.  

Study: How do emotions affect learning?

(Pixabay)

Emotions such as feeling sad or happy may affect how students learn, asserts researcher Caitlin Mills, who co-authored a recent study on the topic. Study findings show that watching something aimed at inducing feelings of sadness yielded better reading comprehension than watching something intended to make viewers feel happy.

The Hechinger Report (12/18) 

Encouraging Emotional Diversity in Boys Studies show that from a young age, boys are taught to suppress their emotional experience, despite research that shows that boys are more emotionally expressive than girls from infancy through early childhood. Psychologists have also found that children who deny emotional vulnerability are also more likely to become adolescents who engage in health-risk behaviors, such as substance use. Furthermore, later in development, men suppress their emotions more than women; and men, in turn experience greater depressive symptoms, and resort more often to physical violence. Click here for the full article from Scientific American that explains how boys are being emotionally suppressed, and why its important for boys, and for society at large, for that to change. Scientific American Traumatic Experiences Widespread Among U.S. Youth, New Data Show Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, can have serious, long-lasting impacts on children's health and well-being by contributing to high levels of toxic stress that derail healthy physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development. New national data show that at least 38 percent of children in every state have had at least one ACE.  Click here to read more on newly released data from the Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Click here for a special supplement detailing the first-ever national agenda to address ACEs and promote resilience, healing, and child and family well-being. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation