How to Set up a Peer Leader Program in Your School [Episode 154]

Lauren 0:01
I’ve seen some high school counselors ask questions about this recently, and I thought I need to talk about utilizing peer leaders in your school counseling program, because this is something that we implemented in the school that I used to work in because we saw a real need. So I’m going to kind of walk you through where the idea came from for our school and why we needed it. And then I’m going to give you the practical how we did it kind of thing. I’m going to talk about how to recruit peer leaders, how to train them, how to support them as they support other students.

Lauren 0:33
I also want to talk about why peer support groups for students are important, and then flesh out the benefits for you of implementing a program like this in your school and let you know that it is possible, and there can be some really great benefits for your students. So let’s sit on back and listen about how I implemented a student ambassadors program in the high school that I used to work in.

Lauren 0:59
You got into this profession to make a difference in your students’ lives, but you’re spread thin by all of the things that keep getting added to your to do list. I can’t create more hours in the day, but I can invite you into my Counselor Clique where you’ll finally catch your breath. Come with me as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that’ll help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your students. I’m Lauren Tingle, 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.

Lauren 1:31
So this idea came to fruition the year that one of our SMART goals was all about facilitating relationships with people in the building. We started noticing that a lot of our students who seem to be at risk for failing classes or having low attendance were some of the same students who, well we made a hypothesis, like we were looking at them, we were looking at their relationships in the school, we started to notice maybe that they weren’t really connected at the school. So they weren’t involved in sports or clubs, and they kind of didn’t have a group of teachers that they gravitated towards. You know, those students who have the connections at school usually seem to do better.

Lauren 2:09
And so we kind of wanted to test this hypothesis, and we were already concentrating on facilitating these relationships in our building. So we thought, how about we take these students and see how we can get them connected to people in our building. We had already done an attendance initiative for current students, kind of focused on this. And we were thinking, okay, a lot of our students that are coming into school, not at the beginning of the school year, were ending up transient with grades that weren’t transferring from their schools, and we were just having a lot of those students coming in the door. And so we thought, of course, they’re coming in and they don’t really know anyone. They’re moving from out of the country, or they’re moving from out of the state, or they’re moving from just another school, where it’s hard to get acclimated.

Lauren 2:57
Think back to when you were in high school, I think about all the time what it could be like to be a new student, to have no one to sit within the cafeteria, to not know where to go when you need the right resources, to not know where the nurse’s office is in the school. It’s really overwhelming. So we thought, hey, what can we do to connect new students, especially those transient ones who are coming into school late? How could we immediately get them connected somewhere in the school? How could we get them connected to a trusted adult and other trusted students that they could start forming relationships with?

Lauren 3:29
We know the benefits of connectedness are huge. Research says it—from higher grades to lower behavioral problems to better mental health. Student connectedness in school, in the community, and just with positive relationships, is a really worthwhile venture to look into in your school. You probably have this in the back of your mind. You know this to be true, but if you can dig into some data here or figure out where your students are having a gap or a lack, this could be a really good place to explore and a really good SMART goal to set for your school.

Lauren 4:05
Now I mentioned in the beginning ours came from a SMART goal that we were setting at the beginning of the year. I don’t have that written out right in front of me. I don’t remember the actual numbers or details of that SMART goal. I just know that was something we were really focusing on for that year, because we thought this might be the solution to those issues we were having with students with the lower attendance, the lower grades, the retention for the grade level. So that’s why we just decided to go for it.

Lauren 4:35
We, as counselors, were being pulled in all directions all the time to enroll new students, to show them around, to translate. Like, we had one counselor who spoke Spanish, and she was being pulled all the time to enroll anyone’s new student who spoke Spanish and to show anyone’s new student around who didn’t speak English. And it was really eating into her time with her students. And we felt for that. We wanted this student to feel comfortable. So obviously, we wanted somebody who spoke their language, but we also understood that was taking away from her caseload and her work.

Lauren 5:07
We thought, what could we do to multiply ourselves in the places that are not specifically counseling duties, like direct counseling? Of course, we love that relationship building with students, and we have a little bit of that on the front end as we’re enrolling them and getting their schedule and everything. But what’s another level that we could go to with these students? So a tier two targeted intervention, where we could connect them to somebody else in the school. So we were not the only connection piece that they had in the school.

Lauren 5:39
So it’s kind of cool, if you think about it, because we were kind of targeting two different groups. So first, we were targeting a small group of students who we were thinking we should develop their leadership skills and have them do something in the school, so students who were already in our school who we could further develop. And then there was a second small group of students who they were trickling in. They were new students at the school, and we were trying to assimilate them into our school community with an immediate sense of belonging and connection. So there are two different groups here that we are serving, and our idea to implement a peer leader group in the school was going to serve two different populations at our school.

Lauren 6:22
So let’s get into how we recruited and trained and supported our peer leaders. So you can call them peer leaders or peer mentors, whatever you want. We called ours peer leaders because we were developing their leadership skills. That was something we really wanted to concentrate on with these students. Instead of peer mentors, they were not doing any sort of relationship mending or restoration between students, like they were not the people solving problems between students, but they were leaders helping connect new students to the school community.

Lauren 6:53
So when we had this idea to come up with a group of peer leaders in our school, I’ll tell you, I had to reassure people in the school that this group was not going to take over our Student Council, because student council was a really big deal at our school, and those student council students gave very informal tours at every open house event that we had, which was twice a year. But you know, people didn’t want us to step on their toes. As we said, one of the responsibilities of these peer leaders would be giving tours to new students.

Lauren 7:24
So this was really more of a year round problem that we wanted to solve, not just at the beginning of the year and middle of the semester when we were having these open houses. These were for students who were just coming in randomly during the middle of the year when a semester had already started.

Lauren 7:39
So we had an application process for the students, because we wanted students to be bought in. Yes, we made announcements to have them apply. Yes, we went out and encouraged them and asked them to apply, but they definitely had to fill out an application. It was not complicated. It was an application with some teacher recommendations, but we wanted them to take action, do something and ensure their buy in.

Lauren 8:04
They had to be good students. They had to be passing all of their classes, and they had to answer the questions in a way that made us know that they were serious about developing their leadership skills, and they had the same vision that we had in helping students get connected to the school community. And so part of that was like just being a friendly student and somebody who was open and welcoming and would be a friendly face that greeted a new student.

Lauren 8:32
We did do like little mini interviews with them too. And once we had the right kids for our group, it was really fun. Now we wanted this student population to be really representative of the school, so we had Spanish speakers. That was a big deal for us, because we were having a lot of students who were coming in who only spoke Spanish, and we wanted our peer leaders to be able to speak Spanish, to have some of them who could.

Lauren 8:57
We did not use this group as the highest tier academic students in the whole school, like this was not based on the straight A student. We wanted all different types of students there who were involved in different things, and like I said, who are representative of the whole school.

Lauren 9:13
To help this group of peer leaders feel like they were a team together, we actually had someone who was on our school counseling advisory committee, a local business person, ask if they could sponsor these students and buy T-shirts for them, like it was a club kind of thing, which was very unexpected and a really nice gift to kick off this new group that we were starting. So I’d encourage you, if you are thinking about starting a program like this, bring it to your advisory council. Tell your advisory council what you need, because you never know who is out there who might be willing to donate some of their time or money or other resources or connections that they might have.

Lauren 9:55
So in talking about how we recruited and trained and supported our mentors, I’ll reiterate that we had some Spanish speakers. That’s kind of the main language that was spoken in our school, other than English. We made sure, when we looked at who we accepted from the applications, that we were having students who represented our whole school, not necessarily the top of the class, but responsible students who could grow into leaders if they were given the right tools.

Lauren 10:21
And then we also really looked at those teacher recommendations, and went to our teachers and said, Hey, who are we missing that we don’t have in this pool that we could go encourage to apply for our Peer Leader program. So we had a really great group of students, and diverse group of students who is ready to welcome and connect new students to our school.

Lauren 10:41
Now, we created a, I would call it a peer support group for this group of students. We gave them an opportunity to be involved in a leadership group. I can’t remember off the top of my head if we required it from the front end or not. I want to say it was optional, but highly encouraged, and I think we offered it in the morning into our first block so it wasn’t going to be forever. Just like any small group, it was a few sessions where we carved out time to develop their skills in things like etiquette and conversation and just the things that we thought were going to be helpful for them as they were talking with other students, but also helping develop them into future leaders after we left the peer leader group. You know, that’s not gonna be forever, but I hope that they could take some leadership opportunities in the future and be able to say, Hey, I’m better at what I’m doing now because of some sort of training that I got in a small group.

Lauren 11:41
I think as counselors, we forget that small groups don’t always have to be this, like really intense, almost like therapy session on something so serious. It can be skills building, like leadership or career awareness or something like that. It can be something in a realm that is not like stress management or grief or loss, like those things are necessary, but we forget that there are other topics out there that we could do. So I want to encourage you to kind of think about running a small group on something like a leadership group.

Lauren 12:13
This is a built in opportunity to have a small group in your school, if you feel like that is lacking in your school, that sort of tier two intervention to teach a small group of students a select group of skills, then I would encourage you to do this leadership group with your peer leaders, because there will be benefits on all ends. You’re going to develop your students strengths or teach them some new skills. You’re going to grow their confidence, and then you’re going to have them being leaders in the school, which is exactly what you wanted them to be, and they’re going to bring in these other new students. So there are a lot of ASCA mindsets and behaviors that show the benefits of peer mentorship and peer leadership for both the mentors and the mentees.

Lauren 13:01
Now we did not have another tier two support for those new students, but you definitely could do that. You could have some sort of friendship group or organization academic skills. I don’t know what the needs of those students coming in might be at your school, but maybe there’s some sort of survey that they’re doing when they’re coming in, or you’re noticing something about their grades, or where they’re all coming from, or that they are all Spanish speakers, and you could do a small group that was in English and Spanish for them, whatever their needs are. You could tap into something that that group of students needs, and you could offer another small group for those new students.

Lauren 13:39
If you want to take it a few steps farther, you could flesh out a more meaningful Peer Mentor Program, where your leaders in the school are not just leaders who then move on after they’ve connected your new student somewhere, but they could continue a one on one relationship with their mentee, or, like I mentioned before, a small group with those new students. I just didn’t have the time or the energy as I was heading up this brand new program. That might be something that you do year two or year three after you’ve kind of gotten your kinks worked out with the intro to the peer leaders in your school.

Lauren 14:17
Obviously getting to know your new students, or hearing from them or following up with your peer mentors or peer leaders after they have connected the new students would be helpful so you can see if they need any more services, so that their tier three individualized support is individualized. If they need more community resources, more individual counseling, follow up with them about their academics, their classes, their teachers, if they need crisis counseling because of where they came from or what they’re going through. You are establishing a relationship with these new students, especially, you know, when they come in in the middle of the year, you do spend a little bit more time with them, getting them acquainted to your school. And so you might have an idea of the resources that they need, and you’ll be able to connect them to the people in the school, with what they need to be successful.

Lauren 15:05
So I will link in the show notes, the student ambassadors. That’s what we called it, group that you could implement in your own school. I have things in there about giving tours, engaging with students, picking up on the social cues, being polite and having them learn how to just look for needs in the school instead of sitting back and waiting to be asked. This resource has like a little tour guide booklet where you can have your students create a tour with videos, and the new students can scan a QR code. It’s really cool. I have everything that I used when I implemented this peer leader program in my school. I called it student ambassadors.

Lauren 15:48
And then I’ll also link the leadership small group. I have them bundled together at a cheaper price than if you bought them individually. I really think they complement each other well together. If I was going to go through the effort of putting together a Peer Leader program, I would support them, those leaders with a leadership small group, because I just think it’s really meaningful to develop them into leaders, and especially those students who might not be top of the class, but who could benefit from some tier two intervention skills like leadership.

Lauren 16:20
So I hope this was maybe inspirational to you to set up some sort of peer leader or student ambassador program in your school, if you find that there is a need here. I wanted to give you the practical details of how I did this in my school, and hopefully inspire you to do the same. Reach out and let me know if you have any questions on the fine details of that, but I think I gave you some ideas to get started, so I’d encourage you to try it out, bring it to your department, see if that is something that you all could implement at the end of the school year, or maybe going into next school year, depending on what your SMART goals are.

Lauren 16:56
Send me a DM if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you about whether you try this program or not. Have a great week.

Lauren 17:05
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of high school counseling conversations. All the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM @counselorclique. That’s C-L-I-Q-U-E. I’ll see you next week.