Ask Me Anything: High School Counseling, Marriage Advice, Would You Rather, and More! [Episode 50]

Episode 50 of High School Counseling Conversations is here! I literally cannot believe we’ve had 50 episodes. I was talking to a friend on the phone. We were just catching up the other day, and she didn’t realize that I had a podcast. It’s one of those I don’t like broadcast it to my personal world that much. And then people are like, Whoa, I need to hear about this.

I’m like, Yeah, I’ve been doing it for 50 weeks, which is absolutely insane to me that I’ve been able to keep something up and keep a routine for that long. I love hearing your feedback, though. And y’all are always so encouraging. So of course I want to keep making episodes every week.

I thought should there be a season two? Should I take a break? And I haven’t been able to schedule in a break just because I always am thinking of new episodes and y’all are always reaching out with good ideas for future episodes. So here we are still no break hitting episode 50 I’m pumped about it because this one we’re gonna be celebrating big with an Ask Me Anything episode.

High School Counseling Conversations is a podcast where we talk about exactly that. A casual potpourri of school counseling topics intended to grow us as school counselors, but also give us space to enjoy each other’s company. I’m Lauren from counselor, click and I’m sharing my experiences and perspectives as a high school counselor. No topic is off limits.

And I’m certain we’ll cover it all on your high school counseling hype girl here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job. Whether you’re just getting your feet wet as an intern, or you’re nearing retirement, you’ll feel like you’re just popping in to catch up with your school counseling. bestie. Let’s go.

I put out a question box on Instagram got some great questions. I think we’re gonna dive into about 13 of them right here. I’m hoping you know, my answers are not going to be 100 minutes long or something like that. I think we’re gonna get through them pretty quickly.

I gave suggestions to y’all for things you could ask about just broad topics I said, ask questions about parenting, marriage, favorite things, would you rather, I mean, the more random the better. And I think that y’all really pulled through with this, we’ve got an assortment of random questions.

So let’s get to the first question. Where is your favorite place to visit and what is your favorite restaurant to go to there. So this might not be a favorite place to visit. I’m just sort of partial I love where I live. I live in Greenville, South Carolina.

If you’ve never heard of it, it is this hidden gem that is making all of those top 50 places to visit really top 10 places to visit top five places to visit it is a fantastic place to visit because we are a real foodie town. We have so many good restaurants here. And there are always new ones popping up like we never go to chain restaurants. This is your plug for Greenville.

If you’re looking for a place to travel, we are about an hour from Charlotte, an hour and a half from Atlanta three hours from Charleston. So we’re close to the beach. We’re very close to the mountains about an hour from Asheville, North Carolina, we’re good central location. But there’s so much to do here.

And one of the things is trying new restaurants because like I said, there are always new ones popping up. So let me tell you about kind of like three main ones that I would recommend if you’re gonna come here, one of my favorite like weekend places if we’re gonna go out spontaneously, it’s called Kitchen Sync S-Y-N-K.

It has lots of local seasonal things, but not like weird local things like I’m kind of a weird picky eater. I don’t want anything like to off the map or like off the grid. I don’t know what you call that, like anything too weird, but they have delicious seasonal things.

And here’s a plug why I like it so much. Our downtown area is like booming. There’s always fun stuff to do. But there’s oftentimes not parking so Kitchen Synk is kind of off the beaten path. And there’s always parking and you can usually walk in, put your name on like little day of reservation list and get in. So that’s why we love Kitchen Synk.

We go to a place called the commons if we’re wanting something casual that is like one of those food halls if you’ve never been to a food hall, you need to go your city needs to have one. So there is a local brewery there. There’s a local ice cream shop there. And then they have a taco place, a more like American kind of delicious, unique burgers place, a bakery.

It’s a really cool spot and then it’s on a walking trail. So we like to go there if we’re just looking for something casual and we might want to have different things so we don’t have to really agree on something.

And then the last place that I love and I would recommend if you’re coming here is called okay, you can laugh. It’s called The Strip Club and it is a steakhouse. It’s a fancy steakhouse. So this one is perfect for celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, like really go hanging out and doing it big, you have to have a reservation.

It’s a tiny little restaurant, and they’re always packed. So those are my favorites for here in my own local town. If we’re traveling, I’m always down for trying something new. Like we look up the best local places to go and ask for recommendations from places, or like from people. I’m always doing my research ahead of time because food and drink is an important priority.

Whenever we go on a trip, we haven’t been anywhere recently that is, you know, worth raving about. We just haven’t gone on trips recently. Moving on.

This one’s a high school counseling question – what is the best way to have senior meetings or keep parents in the loop about post secondary plans?

So first, I’m going to give you some resources, then I’m going to follow up with some thoughts.

Episodes, 39. and 40 would be really good ones to go back and listen to if you’ve heard them already. Just go back and listen again. And maybe you’ll have some new ideas after you hear it. Episode 39 is called running senior meetings like a boss. And you’ll actually hear me mention it again in an upcoming episode because it was one of the most popular episodes of 2022.

And then Episode 40, that I just mentioned, is called how to advocate for all post secondary plans. This will give you some ideas about helping your students and serving your families whose students are not just going to four year college, but are also going to two year school, military and straight to work.

If you search on my blog page for, like type in the word senior or click on the blog topic called College, you’ll find lots of other blog posts that I think would be helpful for you. And I’ll link a few in the show notes that you might find helpful.

Okay, I mentioned resources. Now here are some of my thoughts.

To keep your people informed about senior meetings, give a big push of general information first, like a big group meeting and then tell them that individual meetings will happen after to answer their individual questions. I think this helps everybody parents and students feel in the know and valued. Like they get the information overload, then they get to come ask the questions that are very specific to them and their situation and their path.

I would also say invite the parents to this even though it might be more work for you as a counselor. In my personal experience, I’ve seen that parents seem most likely to come into these meetings like these one on one planning meetings in ninth grade, and in 12th grade. It’s like the newness of coming in as a freshman. And then, hey, is there anything we need to know before graduation for 12th grade?

Let them sign up for their own meeting times if possible. Again, this is a lot more work on you. But you will have more people show up to the meeting more parents show up to the meeting and more students remember and keep their meeting time if you let them pick their meeting versus assigning them a time.

Definitely assign times to those who don’t pick a time so that you do make sure you see everyone. It’s a lot of coordinating, but it’s definitely worth it. That in person meeting when parents come is a great touch point for those parents, especially if they’re helicopter parents who are always in contact with you.

Or on the other end of the spectrum, if there are parents who are very uninvolved, if you can get them into that meeting, you’ll be able to see just such a variety of parents, I hope that you get to meet all of your parents in the senior meetings.

And then while you’re having those senior meetings, I would say an action step leading away from that is give the students some take away resources like the Senior Planning Guide from my TPT store for those students who want more ways to keep themselves organized, or those students who need a little more direction after the meeting.

I’ve always found it helpful to be like, Hey, I noticed you’re very overwhelmed here sitting in this meeting. Here I’ve printed this out. Here’s a folder of resources that I think you can use tools to help you process. Let’s let all of this settle in a bit, let it sink in. And then we’ll talk again soon. And kind of make a note to yourself to follow up with that student after they’ve had some time to process all the information you’ve given them and to think through some of the things that they still may need help with.

I’m pausing this episode to let you know something fun and valuable. That’s coming doors to the Clique Collaborative, my high school counseling membership are opening again to welcome new members on January 18.

During the month of January, you could expect regular weekly episodes of high school counseling conversations, plus a challenge to help get you ready for the new year. I’ll offer three live workshops throughout the month to help set you up for success as the second half of the year starts. Be sure you’re on the click collaborative waitlist to be the first to hear of all of these plans. Go to cliquecollab.com to join the waitlist today.

Okay, next question. What is your number one piece of marriage advice? Okay, this is going to be a general piece of advice like if things are going decent in a general sense of your marriage if you’re married, I’m saying this like you’re not in crisis, there’s not abuse or neglect or something like that happening. I’m saying like regular day to day and regular communication and problem solving issues that are going on.

My number one piece of marriage advice is to believe the best in the other person believe the best in each other. And here’s why. This is why I have felt this to be helpful. A lot of our conflict in our marriage has come from times where we’re not on the same page in communicating are we have these unmet expectations or frankly, ridiculous expectations that I might have like of my husband, where things just didn’t go as planned.

And when I say planned, I mean, like planned in my head. So I need to tell myself, I need to believe the best in my husband, because certainly he didn’t mean to make this happen. This was not his plan to XYZ, you name it, I can come up with some reason that he sabotaged something, you know, I think as women, we can come up with a whole story in our head. I have noticed that in me and my friends and things that we share.

So my number one piece of marriage advice in the general sense of day to day marriage would be believed the best in each other. And usually, if we remind each other of that, then we can move through problem solving and communicate better about issues that are happening or will happen in the future.

Next question. Have you been able to match your counseling income by being an influencer? Y’all? I don’t feel like I’m an influencer, that feels weird. It would feel weird to like define myself as that, you know, content creator might be the the term I would tell a person on the street or something.

But here’s what I will say about this. One, if we’re talking TPT, Teachers Pay Teachers, having a TPT store, it is a slow game. You could go back, I mentioned this, I think in another question that we’re going to have, but it’s a slow game, it takes years to build, it’s not probably something that anybody sets out for that to be their full time job.

But it does become that for some people. As a family, and as a married couple, we have always tried to live on one income just as a way to live below our means. So that has always been our plan since we’ve been married. And I’ll tell you too, we have had financial goals for our family like paying off debt, and investing and saving.

We paid off $42,000 of student loans of my husband’s before we had our first daughter. In 11 months, we paid off $42,000. And I didn’t have a TPT store, then I mean, that was like I was working in a school, my husband was working at his job. And we set a goal and we aggressively paid that off.

So it is really cool to me that I’ve been able to build a business around something that I love, high school counseling, and I will never take that for granted. When I mentioned that we have always wanted to live on one income and be able to have flexibility with the other income, that was something that we considered when I decided to take a step away from working full time in the high school that I was in.

So we had already kind of established that in our marriage and as something that we were already doing. So I know I didn’t answer your question, Have you been able to match your counseling income by being an influencer? But I’ll say, you know, that was never the goal, I guess. And we are very open with our finances. Like with our close community, it feels weird to do that on a podcast where I don’t know who’s listening.

But I’ll yeah, I feel like I answered what I can answer about that.

Maybe I should have flipped these questions. How did you get started with TPT? You get the fullest and most comprehensive answer to this question back in episode one, counselorclique.com/episode1, which was just an introduction to me and a backstory of how I got here.

So the short version of getting started on TPT was the I noticed there was a huge gap in the availability of high school counseling resources out there for purchase, like, hey, I want to go buy something to incorporate into my program, but there’s really nothing out there.

And you know why? I’m certain I know why. It’s because high school counselors don’t have time to do that. Or they don’t always want to make the time to implement something new and like add something to their program. I get that.

So I would say I’m a creative person by nature. And when I saw other people doing that, running TPT stores doing creative things, I thought, hey, I think I could do that too. Maybe that’s how everybody starts. I really just started creating things for my own high school counseling program before it evolved into something else.

I also had a friend Rebecca of It’s Not Rocket Science, who you’ve heard on the podcast before, and she’ll be on an upcoming episode as well. She was already writing high school science curriculum and she had a TPT store and she encouraged me to start my own.

So before I ever got started, I saw her doing her thing and she was and continues to be a great mentor to me in this TPT world. I really was bit by an entrepreneurial bug. And I think it makes sense. When I look back at career assessments and personality assessments.

I love the flexibility and adaptability that creating things for other people creating things out of nothing brings, I love it, I thrive off of it. So that is how Counselor Clique is what it is now. I’ve loved learning and growing. And I’ve learned so much that I’d never even anticipated learning. As I have built a Counselor Clique.

Here is another school counseling question. How do you handle helicopter parents when you don’t have supportive school leaders to back you up? Now, I will be honest and vulnerable here with you for a moment, some of the scariest and most miserable moments that I had in my career were because of parents.

But I have always had someone to back me up. It doesn’t mean that I’ve always had everybody to back me up. If I didn’t feel comfortable going to the assistant principal who was assigned to this particular student, I brought in someone else who I knew would have my back.

If I didn’t feel heard by a principal, I made sure I was bringing my department head to a meeting who would advocate for me, even if there was one particular person who wasn’t supportive, I could always find someone else, whether it was a different administrator, or another counselor who could act as a level headed liaison or an extra set of eyes and ears.

I am not going into something scary by myself. You should not have to do that. So always find somebody to have on your team.

Okay, we’re shaking things up with a would you rather and this is this is a really tough one. There are a lot of things to unpack in this would you rather.

Would you rather to loudly in front of an entire class? Or have a silent but deadly in your office during a small group? Hmm, this is very tough, because there are a lot of things to consider. I always like to put out there things to consider in a good would you rather.

So, I mean, I’ll tell you, I think it’s going to be the second option, silent. But you got to consider your audience. Let’s go let’s talk about that second option silent but deadly in your office during a small group. So things to consider, is this week one? Or is this week seven? Like do the students know each other? And they’re going to be like hollering and yelling about it?

Or is this going to be something where like everybody die silently, like of suffocation of a smelly toot in your office? I don’t know. And like How comfortable do you as an adult feel blaming a student or acting like this didn’t happen. But I think I would choose that to spare me the embarrassment of tooting loudly in front of an entire class like that feels very hard to escape and it feels like you’re putting yourself out there for more embarrassment on a whole school level.

Because you know, if you’ve got five or seven students in a small office, and they never actually confirm that it’s you versus like 32 seniors in a class who are gonna go tell the entire school because they know it’s you. I think I’m going to choose the second one. I would love to hear your thoughts after listening to this episode if this was a tough would you rather. Thank you for this submission.

If you weren’t a counselor, what subject where do you teach?

Okay, I don’t know that I’d be a teacher if I wasn’t a counselor. Is that okay to say? There are so many things I wouldn’t teach. So maybe let’s start with that. I hate science. So no, I don’t know anything about social studies. So no there too. I’m not musical or athletics have no instruments or PE or ROTC.

I don’t really enjoy math. And I think the students would probably be smarter than me in that subject. So I’m gonna say no to math. I think English would be the subject, like the academic subject I’d most gravitate to because I do like writing and speaking, and I love grammar. I am a grammar nerd. But I’d be afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the reading. I’m more of an audio book girl these days.

I do like art and creative things. But I don’t really have skills there. I don’t think like I don’t, I don’t know that they’d carry into a classroom. So if it’s an option to choose or create an elective at this point in my life, I think teaching a high school, social media management, business management or marketing class would be really cool.

And I’m not making those up. Those were offered in the high school that I used to work at. So maybe I can go back and be a guest speaker.

Okay, biggest awkward moment working in schools. What is your biggest awkward moment working in schools? So I’d say, I mean, especially after being there in the same school a couple of years, I don’t feel super awkward that often. I didn’t feel super awkward that often.

Sure, maybe in my first year, there were more of those that I like blacked out in my memory. And I did share in the Halloween episode, Episode 46, a few weeks ago that I slipped and tripped in the hallways, I mean, probably too many times to count just depending on the shoes I was wearing. Or if I was like running and in a hurry.

I slipped in the cafeteria once where the only people who are around were custodians, and they they did not know how to respond to me. It was like absolutely completely silent, which that made it the most awkward thing in the entire world. Like I didn’t get hurt. I was really trying to be careful, but just no one knew how to react to that.

And then another time I slid down a main hallway on one of those juicy mandarin oranges. I was more like personally embarrassed, but there weren’t a lot of people around to see it. So not that bad on the scale of terribly embarrassing.

So I’ll tell you more of like an awkward moment since that’s what the question asked anyway, in our school, you would have to have an agenda pass signed, like you, the teacher would write in the back of it, where are you going, what time it is, and sign their initials.

So a student would hand you their agenda, you as the adult sign it and hand it back to them. So in the counseling office, this happened a lot like, I mean, for me, I guess I would be saying it at the same time, I was putting out my hand and imagine a gesture like, I’m opening up my head, it’s flat, and I want a student to put their agenda on the top of my hand, I’m like doing the motion for you right now. And you can’t see it.

I could probably name at least three times that this painfully awkward moment happened all different people, I would put my hand out for the agenda and say, Can I get your agenda to sign you a pass? And they would rest their hand flat on top of mine? And I’m like immediately cringing, what are we doing? Why are our hands touching? Why are we in this slow motion awkward moment right here that I can’t get out of it?

I’m like, no, no, I need your agenda. And like they feel uncomfortable too. The hand arresting was probably just like the cringy us moment. I also had a student put their hand on top like go to shake my hand like that. But it was my left hand because you know, I’m going to hold it in my left hand and write with my right hand. So I put my left hand out, they put their left hand out, we shook left hands.

And I really I committed to the handshake because I didn’t want the student to feel awkward to be like, Wait, what are you doing right here? So I just went with it shook their head. Yes, you’re welcome for this meeting, this time and place that we got to sit together and connect. But now I also need your agenda.

So I would say those would be some of my more awkward moments. But I didn’t want the student to feel awkward in it. So I just had to like grit and bear it and hope that they didn’t notice that I felt awkward.

Here’s another marriage type question. I don’t know, just a personal question. What is one of your husband’s strengths that’s a weakness of yours that you wish you could steal, and why? I think this is a great question. We are actually complete opposites. I don’t know that I would steal his best traits, especially if that meant that he lost them.

He is super gifted in the ways that he is gifted. And I appreciate that his gifts are completely different than mine. Y’all probably heard me talk about him before. But I’ll tell you, he’s analytical structured, he loves routines, he loves data. And then I love that I’m the complete opposite of those things. I keep us balanced. We keep each other balance.

I love chaos, unstructured surprises, spontaneity, flexibility, I thrive in those settings. Personally, like just another, I think this is the one that I would take. He is the most patient person I’ve ever met, I can count on one hand the amount of times that he has lost his cool, I’ve never heard him raise his voice, it really takes a lot to ruffle his feathers. I think that’s what I would want. Like that he has that I could definitely use more of he is extremely patient with me.

He’s the most patient dad. He’s patient with people in customer service and waiters when they get his order wrong. Like he’s so kind. My husband is the kindest person I know. I told him, he’d have to listen to this podcast episode to hear the answer to this question when I told him that this was a question that came in.

Do you want to go back to in school counseling in the future? So as you have heard, I am not in a school full time. That’s something I’m transparent about because now I get to one raise my daughters, but two, I get to create resources and content for other high school counselors, which I absolutely love. I have always said High School Counseling is the job for me.

I left on good terms. If and when it’s time to go back to school again, I will be a high school counselor again. There is no doubt about it. There is not another job that I’d ever want to do. Even as I am getting to hear stories of counselors in the field right now, I just know that there’s always work to be done in schools. I appreciate faculty, teachers, administrators, counselors and the work that they do for students.

And I would love to be back in that. The thing I missed the most about working in a school is working with students and helping students so I look forward to a day where that is the season that I’m in again. It’s not right now, but I do think it will be in the future.

Here’s a student question, I guess, what is the most random or funniest unsolicited comment you’ve received from a student? So I think these come in the form of a student doesn’t know it’s maybe not appropriate to ask or to say.

The first one that came to mind was when I was pregnant. Of course, that’s how all these stories start. Right? Someone says something inappropriate to a pregnant woman. I remember a student who I loved who like always came to my office. She was walking behind me in the hallway.

I still had, you know, you have a baby at 40 weeks, I probably still had 15 weeks to go. I mean, I was more than halfway, but like still plenty of time before I was gonna have a baby. And I remember her saying something like, Ms. Tingle when you about to have that baby? Soon, right? Because your hips are ready to have that baby.

I was like, oh, like the way that she was so confident in talking about my body. I was like, girl, you can not say things about people’s bodies like that. I am fine with it. And I’m glad that you feel skilled in being able to tell me when my baby’s coming. But I think we still have some time. And I mean, I just laughed, I was not offended by it at all.

It was so funny. I just couldn’t believe she said it. And I was like, hey, in the future, probably don’t say that to someone who you don’t know. I don’t know if it’s just because he felt comfortable with me or what.

Another one about commenting on appearance I had this student will call him Jimmy, because his name is Jimmy and he is long gone, graduated. He is doing big things in his life. I’m sure. I remember one time, he was just a student who would say things just to see how I’d react.

He came into my office and I was trying to get him to talk about something. And he changed the subject as my almost five year old does often and told me that I need to fix my hair. And he can’t believe he couldn’t believe that I wear my hair as messy as I do, or something.

I was like, Listen, you don’t know my life. You don’t know the chaos, but I’m dealing with here day to day. I don’t think it was a day that I had done my hair. So you know, I couldn’t really be offended. I’m like, Yeah, I probably should do my hair at some point. Thank you for that suggestion, Jimmy.

I didn’t take it, you know, to heart and say, I’m gonna like go cry or anything like that. But I did laugh about it. Like, I couldn’t believe that he had the audacity. But I did. I could believe it. He was someone who would just say things just to see how you’d respond. So I appreciated that. Probably should take more care of how I look. But you know, you take what you can get on a on a day of craziness in high school counseling.

Okay, here’s the last one I have for this. I don’t remember what the situation was. But I remember laughing about it. And my husband and I say it all the time now is just like as a joke. I think I was walking to my office with a student who I knew pretty well. And I don’t know if you know, he was looking for candy.

And he thought that I had it and then I didn’t or what the situation was, but I remember him walking down the hallway saying, basically chasing me behind me saying, “You fake. You fake. You fake.” And I don’t know why he was telling me that I was fake. Like maybe I had promised candy. But it wasn’t the candy that he wanted or something.

So my husband and I laughed like it’s an inside joke. Like he was at the school with me or something and call each other you fake you fake you fake all the time. That feels more like an unsolicited random comment that maybe you’re not laughing about. But I am because I was there. But I’m sure you all have a list of those scenarios, those stories that have happened in high school counseling, because I think we can all write a book with the quotes that we’ve heard from students.

And now we’re at our last question. It’s another would you rather? And I’ll leave you with this. And I’ll let you ponder on it as well. Would you rather have fingers for toes or toes for fingers?

I think I mean, I had to like process this in my head and picture. Fingers for toes or toes for fingers? I think I would take fingers for toes because I really don’t need like short stubby fingers that can’t do anything. I need an opposable thumb that can open doorknobs I can type on a computer.

And I mean, this is too much information, but I probably have skinny little toes anyway. So I mean, maybe my toes already looked like fingers. I’m not sure. I don’t think that there’ll be many disadvantages to having fingers as toes. I’m staring at this question thinking I feel good about this one. I feel pretty confident that I would rather have fingers for toes.

So send me a DM on Instagram. Let me know of those would you rather. They were really good would you rathers. Let me know what your answer would be. Thank you for celebrating episode 50 with me! Send me a DM let me know maybe what your favorite episode that we’ve had so far of high school counseling conversations has been I’d love to continue a conversation with you in our DMS.

So send me a DM at counselor click on Instagram. I would love for you to say hey and hear what you’re loving about the podcast.

Thanks for listening to today’s episode of high school counseling conversations. All of the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast.

Be sure to hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram, send me a DM @counselorclique. That’s C-L-I-Q-U-E.

Thanks so much for hanging out with me. I’ll see you next time.