The School Counselor’s Role in School Safety and Crisis Management with Brandy Samuell [Episode 146]

Lauren 0:00
Our guest today gives us a framework for thinking through some, I would say, often intimidating topics like school safety and crisis management. You’ll hear as she dives right into her personal experience with a really terrifying moment in her school district where she was actually in charge.

Lauren 0:17
She was in a new leadership position, and she was having to make important decisions for what to do next. Let me introduce you to our guest, Brandy before we get into this interview. Brandy Samuell totes 32 years of experience dedicated to public education.

Lauren 0:33
She has experience in roles ranging from Special Ed teacher to school counselor to assistant superintendent, and she’s been in all types of school settings. Some of Brandy’s expertise and passion topics include mental health support and school turnaround.

Lauren 0:46
Most of her career has been dedicated to supporting students emotional and behavioral needs and then managing coaching and developing staff. Currently, Brandi is the Director of Mental Health and related services at eLuma.

Lauren 0:58
Brandi has successfully managed multiple school related crises and provided crisis management and response training for school staff and community based first responders, which that’s what we’re going to get into today. Let’s roll the intro, and then we’ll dive right into our conversation about school safety and crisis management with brandy Samuell.

Lauren 1:22
you got into this profession to make a difference in your students lives, but you’re spread thin by all 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.

Lauren 1:36
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 1:55
Hey, Brandy, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast to talk about something we haven’t talked about on here yet. So I have already introduced my guest to you with your background, but I just want to welcome you onto the show.

Brandee 2:07
Oh, Lauren, thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me. I have to tell you, I’m so honored and humbled. Being a counselor was the greatest period of my career in full transparency. It surpasses everything and and school counseling opened the door for me for so many other professional opportunities, but my greatest admiration is for school counselors.

Brandee 2:28
I love the role, I love what we do, and so I’m just truly, truly humbled to be here, and I’ve been able to listen to some of your podcasts, and I listened to your July 22 and it resonated with me so much. You and your guest, Lauren, I love the transition piece of the transition from middle to high school.

Brandee 2:47
I’ve just always been a huge believer and supporter in any time we can smooth the transition for a student, we set them up for success. I really love what she’s doing with looping. I love looping as a teacher, and then I didn’t have the opportunity to do that as a counselor, but in some of the roles I was in, I would have students for two years. So,

Lauren 3:06
So you get it, you know, this world.

Brandee 3:09
I get it, and I just, I love school counselors. Thank you for having me here. Truly honored,

Lauren 3:13
Of course. And they got a little pep talk to start off this this episode. I think they were like, Yes, this is the greatest. Or if they don’t feel like it’s the greatest right now, hopefully, you know, they take something away from the podcast here or there that they can get into that zone.

Lauren 3:27
So let’s dive right in. Okay, so I know this is going to be partially a pretty sensitive episode because of what you have been through. So let’s start off. I know you’re using this story to impact others. Tell us what happened your first week as an assistant superintendent in 2014 like walk us through the tragic event that you went through.

Brandee 3:48
Yeah, in 2014 it was my seventh day at work as an assistant superintendent in New Mexico, in a district in New Mexico. And I’ll shout it, I’ll say the district Roswell. It’s, you know, it was a publicized event, and my seventh day at work, and I have a background as a as a special ed director, I have a background in counseling, right teaching special ed, and in my role, I was assistant superintendent of student services.

Brandee 4:13
So really, that was pretty much everything outside of curriculum that had an impact on students from special education, school counselors, social workers, nurses…

Lauren 4:23
You name it. You covered it.

Brandee 4:25
Yeah, yeah, student services. And so I was going through all the things right in those first seven days, going around, meeting school leaders, going and visiting schools, just getting to know people, and going through really a list of the ask and that first week. And anyway, so we had the first full week of school, and then we were off on a Monday, due to some schools were off, we had cops freeze. It was in January.

Brandee 4:51
At any rate, one of the things was lead the crisis team. So I start asking around when I’m at schools, and I found out, long story short, we had no crisis team. So that was one of my first things to do, is like, get to know people, establish the crisis team, and then put in place training. And I’m trained in system, critical incident stress management, which, you know, has multiple levels if you’re familiar with it.

Brandee 5:13
So at any rate, I’m on my way to work on Tuesday, January 14, 2014 and anybody that knows me, I’m never on time anywhere ever I can leave an hour early and I won’t be there on time. And this day I had extra time, and I thought, oh my gosh, I’m going to stop at Starbucks, and the drive through was too long.

Brandee 5:33
And I go inside, and I get a phone call from a number, I don’t know, but it was a Roswell number, and it was the other superintendent, and she said, Brandy, Mr. Burris, he’s our superintendent has asked you to activate the crisis team.

Brandee 5:47
And my heart stopped, and I said, Okay, what’s going on? And she said, we have a suspicion of the school shooter at Borinno Middle School. And I said, okay, just get out of line. And I go to the office, and in my mind, I’m thinking, we don’t have a crisis team.

Brandee 6:03
But I couldn’t say it out loud, like I just couldn’t say it out loud. I thought, Brandy, you just have to be calm. So I get to my office, and my my secretary was awesome. She’s always there. And I was like, hey, Angela, can you go to human resources? And I couldn’t say anything, because I had been told, you know, keep this on the down low.

Brandee 6:19
And anyway, we pulled everybody with a lot of counseling license or social work license in the district, because I didn’t know the magnitude. I didn’t even know if it was accurate, my director of school nurses, and we pulled all of our nurses who wouldn’t be at a feeder school. And that’s how we started rolling.

Brandee 6:38
And we got everybody to come to our our conference room. And by this time, as you can imagine, in a small town like Roswell, you know, no town in New Mexico outside of Albuquerque or Santa Fe or Las Cruces is big. And so word was spreading. Everybody knew why they was they were being assembled.

Brandee 6:55
And so I just gave the talk, and I said, I prayed, and I said, Hey you guys, I know you don’t know me. I just, I have to ask this. Will you trust me? And I did a quick training in sisum. I just did the bare bones. And fortunately, those of us who are trained in multiple tiers of sism always have a crisis box.

Brandee 7:16
Like, right now in my garage, I could pull the crisis box and go to any event like it’s labeled, it’s tab. So thank goodness I listened and was prepared for that. So really, I just taught the method, and I said, you know, I don’t know anybody. I don’t know the personality. So when I pair you up, if it’s somebody that you don’t pair up with, will you just do it for me this time? Because we don’t have time.

Brandee 7:39
And I truly, have to tell you, I was overwhelmed by the collaboration, the partnerships, just the the true gratitude I have in a process. So in any way, there was a shooting while, there’s so many horrible parts of it, right? And people have been greatly impacted to this day.

Brandee 8:00
One of the most difficult things it was, it was during school drop off. So we didn’t know what students were there and what students were not there. And the district had somewhat of a process to transport students from a crisis or a catastrophe for reunification, but not really.

Brandee 8:20
And again, the issue was we didn’t know who was there if it wasn’t. So at any rate, we had a school shooting. But was a single shooter. He shot in the gym before students assembled prior to school. This is a student who had never been on the radar for any behaviors.

Brandee 8:36
One of the parents had been an employee of the district. One actually contracted, for me, deep roots in the community, like this wasn’t a new family, and he thought he was shooting at one person. It was a mistaken identity, if you will. And what really happened is it wasn’t a direct shot.

Brandee 8:57
The shot missed, but it ricocheted off of metal roofs of a gym, and so buckshot scattered, right? And so we had two students who took the most impact and and they’ve had some lifelong challenges. I’m still in contact with one of them, and he’s written a book.

Brandee 9:14
I just want to give a little plug for him. Nathaniel Tavares, he’s an incredible kid. I guess he’s not a kid now. He’s an adult. But he’s written a book. It’ll be out soon. He does national speaking tours. So at any rate, we deployed the crisis team there, and we followed the system process.

Brandee 9:32
And of course, we work with community and state agencies, but we primarily led all the counseling because they really looked at our process and it’s nothing I did or didn’t do. I knew a process, right?

Lauren 9:44
You had so many things that you just shared, that I have so many thoughts on. First, thank you for sharing that, because I’m sure going back to that day can bring up a lot of emotions for you, whether it was there was obviously sadness and you were scared, I imagine. And making decisions in the moment. I can’t imagine.

Lauren 10:03
You just like, went to bed the night before thinking, like, oh, I need to get that crisis team. You know, that’s on my to do list for this week. And then you wake up in the morning and you you need it right, right then and there, and you’re panicking. Like, okay, I’m not allowed to panic. I have to be the one who’s calm and in charge.

Lauren 10:20
And how many times does that happen? Like, as a counselor or a teacher, we’re like, sure, you have to be the calmest person in the room. Like you have to be the one who’s regulated so that you can help somebody else. And I’m sure you were using those skills that you had as a counselor to do that.

Brandee 10:33
Oh, Lord. 100% I think. And I think that’s the thing. You touched on it very well there. And you know, in counseling, we’re always in the moment. I feel like. I believe the vast majority of us try to be extremely proactive, but it’s not necessarily the nature of the profession, right? Just you articulated it so well, you know? And one of the difficult things was, I knew no one in the district, truly.

Lauren 10:58
I mean, it’s like you hadn’t earned their trust yet. Like, are they going to listen to me?

Brandee 11:03
And not not to get into a sensitive subject, and not to be offensive to anyone. But, I mean, it truly had to be a from a higher power, because you just don’t ask, I you any of us, we just don’t typically ask people how you don’t know me from Adam, but just trust this.

Brandee 11:19
And I don’t know if it was everybody was in shock, but what I really believe is it says, and I’m there, you know, I don’t get anything from them. I believe in their system. But it is such a process, and it’s a very well, it’s a very structured process. It’s a very empathetic process, and considers everyone impacted.

Brandee 11:36
You know, I met the superintendent of schools, my boss one time prior to this. One time. And he and I have developed an extremely strong relationship. I mean, you just don’t go into the trenches with somebody and not. I made some incredible relationships in Roswell out of this tragic event. I have some professional colleagues, and have become some of my dearest friends. And I met them during that event.

Lauren 12:01
I’m sure that would something tragic. I think we can all look back on four times in our life and say, like the people who are around us during that time really would shape you and change you and teach you things and process it with you. Like, I’m sure you and that team were never the same, and it’s something that lives in all of your memories.

Brandee 12:19
Oh, 100% and it changed. I was in Roswell four years. I’m a bit of a nomad. I get I get bored easy, and I want to take different challenges and and and professionally, that’s been a huge benefit to me, because I’ve been in a variety many, many different settings. I’m fortunate, you know, I’ve been extremely rural, suburban, urban. I was in the virtual world prior to covid.

Brandee 12:40
But it, what it did is it changed how I looked at everything in education, not just crisis planning. It changed how I think about students, staff. It changed my approach to communication. It really changed my approach to having clear processes for anything.

Brandee 12:55
Like, I know, nobody likes to write manuals or handbooks or processes. Like, it’s not, you know, there are some people that do, but for the most part, most of us don’t. But just what an impact it has when you are in a critical situation, and those of us who must remain calm. So it really changed everything for me, personally, professionally, I think for the better. I like to think for the better.

Brandee 13:19
Cynicism, skepticism, that didn’t increase for me, what it really did in my support of school leaders, because while I was there, I also got heavily involved in school turnaround. So I never really stepped away from the impact that a process can have, or really understanding our students. Not just academically, but socially behaviorally.

Lauren 13:41
And I think that that’s where you take that counseling background. And you really can see that, like, you can see the social emotional implications that your work, even as, like, a higher up person who’s maybe not directly working with students all day, every day, but like, you know the social emotional implications that this school shooting was going to have on students.

Lauren 13:59
And, like, as a Director of Student Services, I’m sure you were taking all that past stuff that you already knew from being a counselor. You were taking this current experience and weaving it together and and then taking that into your next role, which tell us a little bit about that. You’re at eLuma. What is your role there? And like, how have all of these experiences now led to where you are currently?

Brandee 14:22
I say eLuma is the culmination of all my experiences. I should be retired. I’m never going to be retired. All of my friends are retired, except a handful

Lauren 14:31
You’re like, but I have still have stuff to give. I still have energy.

Brandee 14:35
And I’m like, super high energy. And like, what am I going to do? Like, what am I going to do if I retire? So at any rate, at eLuma, what I really do is I’m the director of product. So I work with schools, other stakeholders within the company, our current customers and our future customers, and really shape out services that we can provide to schools.

Brandee 14:56
And so what I like to pitch that eLuma does is because I really believe that, is we provide access for students to counseling or behavioral support that might otherwise go untapped. And we do that by building the capacity of schools and staff.

Brandee 15:12
And then we really help schools define solutions, both short term that are more reactive and long term solutions that are more proactive. And so it’s really eLuma you said it, Lauren, it’s a culmination of everything. Due to my experiences and that I have gotten bored easy, and I’ve been a gen ed teacher, special ed teacher, school counselor, behavior interventionist, educational diagnostic, like, I can go on and on. I don’t say it to be pretentious, like I’m not special. I’m glad that I get bored easy, because it just always led me to something else.

Brandee 15:42
And so I believe that those the roles I’ve had have allowed me a great understanding of schools and needs that are out there. I truly do my very best to stay in touch with the current market. I go to a lot of sales calls, I go to a lot of conventions and try to meet educators. I’m in a webinar or webinars every day. I want to know what’s going on, like I like to hear I like to hear our schools talk, right?

Brandee 16:08
I miss it number one, but I just like to think it’s bringing experiences together, listening and finding those gaps that we can feel, that schools are unable to fill. As you guys know better than me, because as counselors, you live it every day. Our behavioral and mental health needs of students are far surpassing the capacity or the numbers of staff we have.

Brandee 16:30
So if we can build in those ways to support students, by building capacity with what we have, you know, there’s limited resources, as as everybody listed on this podcast knows. Be it financial or people, resources, they’re limited, but student needs are growing, so how do we build the capacity and what services could schools afford to put in place to support students?

Brandee 16:54
So it’s really just a culmination of experiences, being in tune with the market, listening, learning, never stop learning and and trying to tap into what’s needed in a way that’s affordable. I believe from school turnaround, we must have sustainable processes and access points, and helping schools to do that.

Brandee 17:15
One of the greatest things, my second greatest thing outside of school counseling is I really love coaching school leaders or working with groups of counselors or social workers, whatever that may be, to talk about, how can you build capacity with what you have? And that’s that’s really what we do at eLuma.

Lauren 17:32
That’s awesome. I think that’s a much needed service. And of course, we’ll link to that in the show notes so people can check it out.

Lauren 17:40
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Lauren 18:04
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Lauren 18:23
Let’s zoom out and go kind of general here. What preventative measures and interventions do you see that can significantly impact school climate and student well being? Like, what are we putting in place if they had all the tools in the world, what should counselors kind of be looking at putting in place for their students?

Brandee 18:40
The thing that stands out to me the most, and I’ve, I’ve come to see this over the past, I’m going to say three or four years, some of you who are more have been in more progressive areas, are gonna be like Brandy, that’s been around for 10 years.

Brandee 18:52
But if we, if we think about some of our more, not necessarily even rural, but remote areas or smaller districts. Really like our small to mid sized districts that we have sprinkled everywhere. We may not have seen this. We’re in our larger, more urban areas. We may have.

Brandee 19:08
I am a huge proponent of universal screeners, and I know that it gets a very I know universal screeners get a very negative connotation in some areas. What I’d like to talk about and the type of universal screeners that I see as being so impactful. And why wasn’t this around when I was a counselor, right?

Brandee 19:27
Why wasn’t this around when I was working with students with significant emotional disturbance? I really like those universal screeners that tap into strengths, that are strengths based, and they look at the social emotional development.

Brandee 19:40
For example, we partner with the DESA, with aperture and the DESA, so I can speak to it most, most effectively or in the in the most comprehensive way. There are a lot of screeners out there that are strengths based. But if we look at teaching skills, such as all the castle skills. Responsible decision making, developing relationships, communication, if we look at those Castle Five and we can identify strengths and weaknesses, just like if we’re doing formative assessments around math or reading.

Brandee 20:13
Because what are we doing guys? You guys all sit on Student Support Teams, looking at tiered support, and we look at all the academic skills, and we look at where the strengths, and we look at the gaps. I believe, and I like to come from the perspective if we’re doing the same thing around social behaviors, and we can target those behaviors and directly instruct those, be it in small group, large group instruction and or individually.

Brandee 20:39
And we can progress monitor, because we can go back and give that screener every four weeks, every eight weeks, depending on the screener you were using, then we can set goals for students, and we actually have data to drive instruction. And not just to make it curriculum based is I’ve always thought in my head, well, why aren’t we treating behavior the same way as this?

Brandee 20:59
We just tend to go from behavior, and I use behavior kind of as a catch all term, because even though we know students may be suffering from some pretty significant mental health ways, health issues, it manifests in behaviors. Be it those very extreme covert behaviors that are loud, they get attention, they’re aggressive to those very overt behaviors that are extremely withdrawn. We just have a student who blends in, but then all of a sudden they disappear.

Brandee 21:29
So how do we look at those behaviors and Directly Instruct? If I was a school counselor today, and I could push a universal screener, that’s what I would do, because, look, I love classroom based lessons at any level. I believe, and from my experiences, I believe they’re highly impactful, if nothing but to make awareness and students believe, Oh, I know her. I know him. I have a relationship with Ms. Hudson. She comes to my class every Wednesday.

Brandee 21:58
It just sets us up for more success as we need to work with students individually. But I would take that data, I would inform my large group, my classroom instruction, and then when we progress monitored or give the mid year assessments, I could see who needed to be broken out. And I would run small groups, which I know so many of you are doing on a weekly, daily basis.

Brandee 22:18
I would advocate for screeners. And I know what your pushback is going to be. I’ve set the scene that gave the pushback is we’re going to identify so many students with significant mental health needs that we’re not going to be able to support them, and they’re going to go straight to special education.

Brandee 22:33
So I’ve sat on that special education side of the fence many, many years, and that’s not necessarily true, not if we’re looking at strengths based measures, and we can proactively teach. Do I know that there are mental health screeners out there that absolutely open up a Pandora’s box, and we do have the obligation to support students, but we don’t have to do that.

Brandee 22:55
Let’s start with something that’s manageable, and let’s roll it out in a way so we can impact the most students. And I just believe in direct instruction of skills. And I’ve heard that on your other podcast too. There’s lots of us that are teaching skills to students.

Lauren 23:09
yeah, and I was going to play devil’s advocate too, because I was going to say the thing that people are going to say when they’re listening to that, is that is great in theory, but I have this huge caseload, like, how can I sit down and do individual screeners with individual students, because we, we would love that in theory.

Lauren 23:26
So I had an episode. I mean, it might have been 2022, at this point, on MTSS and talking about multi tiered systems of support. And it’s really an untapped model. I think in high school or high school counselors are doing it. They don’t know that it’s called that, and that is so that we can reach all students and really kind of give a benchmark for where our students are.

Lauren 23:49
Even with a big caseload, you got to be like triaging. Where are they going? Who needs the most help? Who is just needing something proactive, some information in the classroom setting, and then who do I need to follow up with? So I know that counselors love that episode, and they love hearing about that and thinking about that.

Lauren 24:05
So do you have any ideas for us with practical steps that counselors can take in their schools to implement MTSS like I would love for you to share about that.

Brandee 24:14
So thank you for being devil’s advocate, because I left out something important. So most universal screeners have a teacher screening component, and I don’t want to put more work on teachers, because I’ve been I’ve been in that seat too. Remember, I’m old. I’ve done these things to get to this point.

Lauren 24:28
But you can involve other people. It doesn’t just have to be on you as a counselor.

Brandee 24:32
We can involve as many people as we can. So let’s listen the load the screener. So again, let me use the desk as an example. As we roll out in the fall, it’s 40 questions if you go to a full screener. But we start with a seven question called a mini and we it can be done Kinder through 12th grade. You can have a teacher, screener K through five, and then you can have a and in 6 through 12, you can have a student self-screener or a teacher screener.

Brandee 25:00
Those teacher screeners with the seven questions for about 30 students take about 10 minutes. Our students who look significantly at risk, you go to a full desk, it’s now 40 questions, and they’re they’re quick, takes an average of about 15 minutes a student up to 20 minutes.

Brandee 25:17
And I know that sounds like a lot. But as counselors, if we’re rowing this boat and we’re guiding this ship, right, then we’re teaching as a capacity thing. It’s pretty easy to roll into teachers filling out the screener on we could have, we’ve got staff meetings anyway, right? We could devote the first few minutes to that. It’s about getting buy in.

Lauren 25:39
Can I ask you a practical question about those? Where do they get that? I will link that in the show notes. Where do they get that? And then, is that a role that you’re seeing, that the school counselor should do? Or should they be partnering with a mental health counselor at their school? Or, like, who? How do you decide who does that?

Brandee 25:55
I think it’s really up to what the school dynamic looks like. I believe it can roll out from the school leader. It could roll out from grade level leaders or subject level leaders, the different like, I know we all have PLCs or something like professional learning communities, and we have coordinators of those, or the school counselor.

Brandee 25:58
I believe it’s just whatever the makeup of the school is, and what’s most efficient. You can link out to any of that information through our website. We call it universal screening. You can link my direct contact info in there. I’m happy to talk to anybody truly I am. Reach out to me at any time. Would love to talk about it.

Brandee 26:31
I believe it drives the MTSS process, and that’s another thing we do at eLuma. We do a lot of consult about how do we build in MTSS? I would love to work with counselors on it, because I can say this, and this is from my perspective, right? I’m not criticizing anybody. I do understand. I’ve been a school level administrator at the middle school level as well as district level, and I’m and I’ve been a counselor, right?

Brandee 26:56
I know where we get plugged into things, and I intentionally use the word plugged in, because who typically knows the most students in a school? The school counselor. Even if they don’t have contact, we’re in classrooms, we’re on lunch group duty, we’re on recess duty, we’re on bus duty.

Lauren 27:13
At least you’ve seen all the names somewhere like you know every name is familiar.

Brandee 27:17
And we’re scheduling. So I know that these things can be burdens, because I’ve felt burdened by it, but now that I’ve been able to step out of it, we hold the power, really, to help students. So we have this data to say, hey, and I’m just making this up y’all. We’ve got 25 9th graders that really need some support around responsible decision making.

Brandee 27:41
I’m already running all these groups. Is there a class or class that they’re clustered in, that I could come in and part of your daily routine, we could do a little weekly lesson? And y’all, it can be 10 minutes. You might not have 30 minutes. And I don’t believe it needs to be 30 minutes. I believe that if we’re touching on these things and and putting, I hate to keep using intervention skills in place if we’re building a toolbox for students.

Brandee 28:06
The beauty with the DESSA and what we do, if you partner with eLuma on this. And again, I’m not just touting us. I’ve, I’ve been in your shoes. We partner with you to identify the interventions that are prescribed as part of the DESSA, so you don’t have to think up an activity, it’s there. It’s like scripted, and then we can use that to progress monitor.

Brandee 28:25
Because remember, when we’re thinking about tiers, we start universally, every student. Not only can, can a screener inform, like our large group instruction, but can really inform the school climate. What kind of events do we need to hold? What do we need to train our staff on? Like, you know, sometimes you’ve been involved in just shifting the mindset of a group of staff, or a grade level of staff. That, you know, changes the entire tone of the school.

Brandee 28:53
And so we start large, right? And we do that at the beginning of the year, and then when we progress monitor through the middle of the year, we may have a large decrease in kids needing responsible decision making skills. And so then we go up and we make it more targeted.

Brandee 29:08
One of the things I like to advocate, and I believe the school counselor, again, this is just from my perspective and outside looking in. But being in the role, is we have the ability to set the tone of the school, like I just said, but in that tiered system, we have the ability to say, hey guys, did you look at the data around communication.

Brandee 29:32
And hey, so in ninth grade English, don’t you guys do a whole unit on a whole Nine weeks on just effective writing, like writing to communicate? Then actually we can build in these targeted skills into the classroom, day to day, and it’s not carving out extra time.

Lauren 29:51
You can just be creative in weaving your way into classroom settings. And I feel like high school counselors, especially, they’re spread thin. They have huge caseloads. They need this pep talk that says, like, even if you do something small, it can make a difference.

Lauren 30:06
So I loved when you said even a 10 minute lesson or like, an advisory at the beginning of everyone’s first block. Today, we’re doing this like, those things make a difference. And I have blog posts and podcast episodes I can link to too, about like, getting in the classroom.

Lauren 30:20
Like you don’t have to have this overhaul of your whole program at the start of the year to make an impact on your students mental health and behavioral health, like it can be something small, and like you said, maybe it’s just changing the attitude of the adults in the building so that we can eventually get there.

Lauren 30:36
Like you have to look and evaluate what your school is like right now, what those relationships are like with the stakeholders, and see, like, where, what small change can we make to start off this year so that we can have big changes with our students?

Brandee 30:49
Oh, I love that. And and, like, one of the things I was thinking about, Lauren, I’ve read this around a couple large urban districts throughout the United States, and I would try this and knowing what we know now, you know, like I was old school, there was nothing recorded, right? Everything was synchronous.

Brandee 31:04
There was nothing asynchronous. Like if I was a counselor and I couldn’t get buy in and I didn’t have time, you can record your lesson and play it so everybody in ninth grade, you guys are going to log in whenever your advisory period is, or get with a selected few teachers who you know will buy it will play the recording, yes,

Lauren 31:24
And you know what? I’ve done that before, where I played it, and then I went and did the live version with the teachers who I knew might not do, yeah, who might not care to hit play. I’m like, I can’t make this any easier for you, but you know they wouldn’t follow up with the questions.

Lauren 31:38
They just like, wouldn’t do it at the capacity that I envision them to, and I knew who those people were, so I would multiply myself with my other counselors or my interns, and then also have a recording out there. Like you can get creative and get this programming or teaching out to students and in very unique ways, if you just put your put your mind to it.

Brandee 31:58
Absolutely and and again, I’m happy Call me anytime. I’ll brainstorm with you. I’ll let you play devil’s advocate with me. I’m totally open to that. So at Eluma, you ask some of the things we do. So that’s one of the things we do. We actually sell large group lessons or small group that can be synchronous or asynchronous, that will provide using we don’t sell curriculum, or we don’t develop curriculum, but using the curriculum you wish.

Brandee 32:24
Or if you partnered on Modesto with us, we actually provide not only do we did we break down the data and say this what you need to do, we’ll do the large group lessons as well. So really, our purpose is we just want to reach as many students as possible. And we want to help you guys do that.

Lauren 32:41
I love that. Everyone’s always looking for more supports. Well, what advice would you give to other school counselors who are working to create a safer and a more supportive school environment for their students? Like, give us your best tips and your best advice.

Brandee 32:54
Visibility, relationships and collaboration. And you’re like, okay, yeah, Brandy, that sounds great. How do we do that? You’re visible. You’re more visible than you know as a school counselor. Everybody knows who the school counselor is. They might not want to come see us, but they know who we are and and to be visible in those unstructured times…

Lauren 33:16
It’s like drops in the relationship bucket that like even just you being there, being in the hallway, asking how someone’s day was, like that stuff all goes in there for you.

Brandee 33:26
Think about, what are the protective factors? As counselors, we all learned about these, but what are the protective factors, and how do I make those? How do I weave those into the culture of the school? I would get buy in from my school leader, and I would talk about what’s going to be easier for you, what’s going to make this easier for you, and how to make it be easier for teachers.

Brandee 33:51
I would really talk to teachers about as well as you guys are already doing this. I would learn three things about every student I came in contact, three things that weren’t obvious, because you never know what’s going to be a hook for a kid. Relationship wise, I would teach teachers. I would build my capacity right, like Lauren said a little bit ago.

Brandee 34:11
And you can bring in other people to help you. We’re not an island, although we’re, it is a profession that it can be very much like an island. What teachers will will pull will do anything I ask? What teachers are sponges? Who’s new? How do we make it easier for them? I would teach them to learn about those build those relationships. Learn three things about every kid. That sounds so old school. Y’all, there’s nothing new. It’s just bringing it top of mind. Really, there’s not.

Brandee 34:36
The other thing, I would really know my kid who went under the radar. And I don’t, I mean, they don’t have poor attendance. They’re there every day. We never hear a thing out of them. They’re quiet. They may look like they have friends, quote, unquote, I would learn about those students.

Brandee 34:53
I would find some way to screen them, be it formally or informally, to know what’s going on. And I’m not trying to target kids, and it’s not, this isn’t about violence. But personality wise, yes, there’s lots of kids who are just super quiet, but in high school, let’s help kids build relationships, because the thing that’s going to sustain them post secondary are relationships, right?

Brandee 35:15
And always be thinking about when we put something in place for a student, is it functional, practical and meaningful? I know you guys put tools in place for students every single day, functional, practical, meaningful, and again, all these things. I know you’re thinking, Brandy, okay, like we’ve been doing this.

Brandee 35:33
But in any kind of interview I do; webinar training, always talk about this isn’t anything new. It’s how do we get creative with it? Like Lauren said, What’s top of mind? And there’s no one size fits all. There’s just not and I know your time is so limited, so I would find ways to ease my time constraints, because you guys are spread so thin.

Brandee 35:58
But, but those are the things; visibility, relationships and collaboration. You guys have a wealth of information out there. It is so easy to find information. There are podcasts, there’s toolkits, like Lauren said, I’ll link these out for you. Tap into everything that’s there.

Lauren 36:15
And I think those things that you’re talking about, the visibility and the connection, the collaboration, those are things that we love to do as counselors anyway. It’s like, I don’t want to do the paperwork, I don’t want to do the transcripts, like I want to dive into those things. And so to hear that, put those together and we can make a safer and a more supportive school environment for our students.

Lauren 36:36
That like, warms my heart to know that that is the counselor’s role, and we are doing what we’re supposed to be in the school to do. I just think back to when you were just talking. I was thinking back to some of those students who I think probably had some red flags to teachers or to administrators, or were being sent to an alternative school for doing something behaviorally that was out of line, and me sitting in a room with him, being like, do I feel safe right now with this student?

Lauren 37:06
Well, they know me and they trust me. I think of anyone in this school that they should be talking to. I’m glad to be here with them, and I’m glad to be like, I didn’t have a a screener in front of me, but I could tell like something is off here. We need to bring in some more support. But that comes from knowing students and from knowing three things about them and talking to their teachers and asking how they’re doing in class.

Lauren 37:28
So hopefully that this can this conversation can be an encouragement to counselors to keep doing probably what they’re already doing, and be looking for those places to just continue creating those safe and supportive school environments because I know that’s like the ideal. That’s what they’re aiming for, and that’s what they want, but just look for tiny ways to do that would be like something that I’m taking away from our conversation.

Brandee 37:52
100% and I just want to say this one thing back back to the incident in Roswell. At this particular time, and this was prior to me being there, and we made lots of changes, as you guys know, you know that’s just goes without saying. But know that this was a middle school setting.

Brandee 38:08
And from my perspective, my experience, my opinion, one of the things that I’ve always seen is if I had to be lean on school counselors, it wouldn’t be at the middle or high school level. Not that we ignore elementary that’s not what I’m saying. We had no counselors at the middle school level in Roswell at the time this event occurred.

Brandee 38:27
It was our largest middle school. It was our most affluent Middle School. In retrospect, and we supported our teachers for years afterwards, because, you know, staff support so important. And we, of course, supported the students, and we were there, and we had multiple counselors there the remainder of the school year, going into the next year, and then we made a lot of structural changes.

Brandee 38:50
It wasn’t a decision in the school, it was a district decision, and I’m not criticizing. I wasn’t there when they made the decision, but in retrospect, and talking to teachers and just listening, just letting teachers talk. And this is a school with very low staff turnover, by the way. Everybody said, and I mean, every teacher I talked with said, I don’t know how I missed the signs.

Brandee 39:13
It was obvious that this was a student who was struggling, even administration said. And you know, administration, this has been a huge worry to them, and it’s impacted their their careers and their professionally and personally. But they talked about, if we would have just, I’m just going to say it.

Brandee 39:31
We were busy focusing on the one to 5% who had the most obvious overt versus covert. I misused that word earlier month, we were busy focusing on the 5% that get the most outward attention.

Brandee 39:48
They’re loud. They participate in aggressive acts. We should have been watching those students who we didn’t hear anything out of. They were just there. And so in retrospect, I just didn’t learn this like it just went an epiphany. I learned this from listening.

Lauren 40:08
Well and I’m sure the leadership of that school counselor in a building like, you know, when the student is being sent down from class to talk to you like you’re going to take that and you’re going to send them to where they need to go next, whether that’s referring them out to more intensive therapy services or sending them straight to the hospital or wherever that is.

Lauren 40:27
Like the counselor in the building is such a leader in their role with mental health and behavioral health and academic readiness and college and career needs. Like we’re juggling so many things, but we are the point person for that. So I can imagine that, of course, those things would go unseen, because there wasn’t someone to like refer that student to.

Lauren 40:48
There wasn’t a person to take action and make sure it is, they’ve followed through, and a bow is tied on it, and that has been taken care of. I could just see it being like passed around, because it’s not my responsibility if there’s not like a real person to own that.

Brandee 41:03
I couldn’t have articulated that even half as well as you. I believe. I believe that, and I agree with you 100%. I do know this – school counselors, I know this about all you. You all make a huge difference every day. I know it doesn’t feel like it, it’s not an easy job.

Brandee 41:20
But I believe that if you’re able to take in those small successes, I believe it’s the most rewarding job in a whole school. But you guys make a difference. And just to Lauren’s point, you are the point people in the school. You hold the power, regardless of what you think.

Brandee 41:37
I know, I know, as school counselors, we get a lot put on us, but you guys hold the power, because you know the kids, and you have the relationship, and you can bridge those relationships. If I went back in a classroom today or back in a school, it would be one or two places now you’re really going to see how affection it would be as a school counselor, or I would go back and teach students with emotional disturbance.

Brandee 42:00
That’s my other wheelhouse, and we just have such an opportunity to impact students and recognize those who need something extra.

Lauren 42:12
Well thank you for that encouragement. Brandy. Ithink anyone listening can hear that and hear the passion in your voice and in your story and be encouraged to keep moving on and keep reaching even the farthest of students. So I appreciate this conversation about school safety, crisis management and just the well being, the social, emotional well being of our students, and you’ve been a big encouragement to listeners, I’m sure. So thank you for being on the show and chatting with us today.

Brandee 42:41
Thank you so much for having me. You guys go do the good work and have the best school year. Reach out to me anytime. Lauren will link my info.

Lauren 42:48
Thank you, Brandy.

Brandee 42:50
Thanks Lauren.

Lauren 42:52
Thank you again to Brandi for joining us for such an important conversation about crisis planning, interventions and management. I know this was a unique conversation that we needed to have, even though sometimes these things involve worst case scenarios that we don’t even want to think about.

Lauren 43:08
I really appreciated her emphasis on having to build that rapport with the crisis intervention team and then joining forces as leaders in the school building to support students in small and large ways. If this episode was helpful for you, would you mind taking a minute to open up your podcast app?

Lauren 43:24
Go ahead, do it right now! And give High School Counseling Conversations a five star review and leave a little note for other potential listeners to find. Your ratings and reviews help other high school counselors, just like you, find and then follow the show. And I really appreciate you for that. Thanks, and I’ll see you next week.

Lauren 43:42
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.