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Monday Ideas for School Counselors

Weekly articles for school counselors with ideas on how to resolve typical school situations with students, teachers and parents using the solution focused approach.

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The Force Is With You… Just Don’t Leave it at School!

May 22, 20232 min read

Dear Friends,

You made it! Looking back at our emails and SF Connections that so many of you have attended this year, I foresee the solution force growing out there and YOU are the reason!

Thank you.

But, hey, don’t leave that solution force at school when you run out the door in a few weeks. Take it with you and let it grow even more! Here’s how.

Just ask yourself this question:

“Suppose I return to school in August and I am ready. What might I have done over the summer months so that when it’s time to go back, I am ready? What else?” X 15.  

Make a list and the solution force will be with you.

You see, you can take the solution force anywhere, and, the more you practice it, the better you get at it. So, why not summer?

And the best part is, if you can’t do something you really want to do, you can follow these steps anyway:

“If I could do____, what difference would that make to me?”

-answer

“And what difference would that make to me?”

-answer

“And what difference might THAT make to me?”

-answer

From there, think how you can start doing some of your last answer on a very small scale:

What would others see you doing?  

Who would appreciate your doing that? 

What would it do for you to know they appreciated you?

Trust the force. The force is your heart’s desire, and it honors the values that are so important to you. When you follow the force inside of you, you are so much more likely to succeed.

I can’t wait to hear what you do!  

Until then, please know that next fall, I am going to move you further into using the solution focused approach even more creatively. We will apply the ideas and sprinkle in some narrative counseling approaches that will make you unstoppable. 

As a matter of fact, I am going to “premier” how I do that at my Solution Focused School Conference in two months with an actual video of a young student who made a threat to another student and was expelled. Without diving into problem talk as to “why,” a straight A student with a good family would take that path, I took him on a new path, about himself, where he recognized that the person making the threat was not him at all. You won’t believe how it ends.

Watch for Monday Ideas to resume mid-August, and please do me one favor before you go:

Email me at [email protected] about something you did this year that grew from a Monday Ideas note. Put in the subject line: MONDAY IDEAS. That will tell me what I need to keep doing next year!

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Practical tools and strategies for school counselors to help students achieve their goals

Practical tools and strategies for school counselors to help students achieve their goals

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(817)799-7678

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