Counseling

As the school counselor at Marion Cross, I am available every day for students, parents and teachers. My role is to support students' development and success academically, personally and socially through home-school collaboration, classroom guidance, individual counseling and small group support.

My goals are to:

• Assist students in developing a positive self-image
• Support students in identifying personal strengths and challenges, both personally and academically
• Teach students conflict resolution, decision making, interpersonal and communication skills
• Support students in dealing with personal concerns
• Promote tolerance and respect for oneself and others
• Assist students in developing an understanding of the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behavior
• Promote goal-setting and assessment of one's learning style
• Develop a strong home-school connection
• Coordinate with community agencies to support student success
• Help students to make informed, healthy choices that positive affect themselves and others
• Work with students, parents, teachers and staff to create a safe environment for students to learn and feel connected

I am lucky enough to have weekly classroom lessons with students in Pre-Kindergarten through Sixth Grade. In my 30 minute class lessons, I use the Second Step Social Emotional Learning Program to increase students’ school success and decrease problem behaviors by promoting social emotional competence and self-regulation skills.  In addition to Second Step, our amazing local resource, WISE, comes in to conduct Care for Kids lessons, which is a health-based early childhood healthy sexuality and abuse prevention curriculum.

Throughout the year, I run many small groups to help students practice a variety of skills. I work with teachers to schedule groups so they take place at the least disruptive time to student learning. The four four main groups I am running this year are:

• Social Skills/Friendship
• Self Regulation
• Stress/Anxiety
• Changing Families (Divorce)

A significant part of my job is to meet with students 1:1 to provide short-term, adjustment-related counseling such as: problem solving, working through a challenge or processing emotions and feelings.

Students may be referred for individual counseling by a teacher, staff or parents/guardians. Care is taken to ensure that students are seen during a time that is the least disruptive to learning as possible.

If a student requires more intense or long-term mental health counseling then parents/guardians will be contacted and a referral to an outside agency will be made.