Are Non-Counseling Duties Draining You? Here’s How to Take Control [Episode 160]

Lauren 0:00
Hi, my friends. When I sat down to come up with another episode for you all, I thought back to the podcast survey that a lot of you all answered, and I was thinking, we need to talk about non counseling duties. So let’s talk about how we navigate non counseling duties that just take up too much time, because it’s a real thing. And depending on who your administrators are, what your team looks like, how many counselors are at your school, you might feel a little overwhelmed by those non counseling duties.

Lauren 0:30
And then, you know what? You might not be very happy in your job when you’re doing more non counseling duties than direct hours with students. Isn’t that always the case? We want those direct hours with students, because we want to feel like we’re making an impact, and it often feels hard to make an impact when you’re drowning under paperwork and your desk is an absolute mess because you have a lot of administrative type things to get to.

Lauren 0:55
Now when I say administrative, I don’t mean like being an administrator, like an assistant principal at your school. I mean those tasks that just take up your day, eat at your time with things that feel a little pointless, like spreadsheets, checklists, to do lists, paperwork, credit checks on transcripts, emailing people, all of the other things that are not directly face time with students.

Lauren 1:21
Okay, first, I want to give you some examples of how I have dealt with these non counseling duties, like, what are the duties that I’m talking about here, and how did I really feel weighed down by them? Because you might be able to relate, and you might be able to pick out some of these same things, or maybe yours are a little bit different, but I kind of want you to pinpoint what those are for you. And then I want to talk about how to advocate for your time, especially to your administrators at your school. And then how to think about possibly outsourcing some of those non counseling tasks, or just at least considering what could be possible if you were able to outsource those or put them somewhere else so that you could get other things done.

Lauren 2:12
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 2:43
So let’s talk about those non counseling duties. When I say that, what comes to my mind are things like testing, lunch duty or hallway duties, bus duties, and then those other administrative tasks or responsibilities. So let me give you an example of each of these, and where I have really felt stuck with each of these, and then I’ll kind of tell you my problem solving process and how I worked through these things and what the result was.

Lauren 3:11
So I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story before, but it’s been a while. I have very vivid memories of being in my first, second, maybe even third year of being a counselor at my school and being stuck with testing. I was the 10th grade counselor, at that time we were grade level counselors. We didn’t roll with students. We did not divide by alphabet. We were strictly grade level counselors, because that’s how many counselors we had at our school. Maybe some of you can relate to that. I was the 10th grade counselor. And along with being the 10th grade counselor, came being in charge of the state testing that all 10th graders took. It was one of those graduation exams that tested their English and Math basic skills, and they had to pass it in order to graduate from high school. They gave it to them in 10th grade, if they didn’t pass it, they had a couple more tries to get their diploma.

Lauren 4:02
Okay, I was the one in charge of all of the testing for, I mean, how many students was that? Over 450. I mean, probably 480 students. And I had the delight of organizing the test booklet, sharpening the pencils, putting them all in the correct baskets, training the teachers and making sure it all went well on the test day. That was not even all of it. I know, if you have had any part of testing, you know a lot goes into it, from filtering lists of students, taking out the students with accommodations, planning the accommodations for those students and who is going to give those tests, what you’re going to do with all the other students who aren’t testing. I mean, it feels like a big responsibility that they want to put on one person.

Lauren 4:47
At this point in time, our district was not on board with counselors not having testing. So what I’m saying is counselors had testing on their plates at this point, there was not a push to take this off counselors’ plates as a non counseling duty yet. So I have these memories, terrible memories. Let’s talk PTSD about these memories. Yes, I do. I would be sitting in a locked testing room, basically a room with a metal door, no windows, with all these baskets as I was trying to organize these tests. I would come in when it was still dark outside. I would leave for the day when it was still dark outside.

Lauren 5:26
I was exhausted. It felt so high pressure. I mean, all you hear is, you don’t do this right, you mess up, you’re going to jail. I mean, that’s what I thought about when I was leaving work and when I was doing this. It was high stress, high stakes. It was tedious, it was boring. It was all those things.

Lauren 5:43
And I don’t remember why, but either my principal called me into his office or I went in there. I think I was going into his office kind of after hours, asking for help, saying, Hey, I could just use some extra hands. Or, teachers are complaining about this. Can you get some of them on board with me? I don’t know. I was just asking for something because I was doing something that I didn’t want to do, and I was getting a lot of pushback, and I didn’t feel like I had people on my team. And now I can rally people for something, but it’s very hard to rally people to get excited about testing that no one wants to do. And it looked like I was, I mean, I was the one in charge of it, and so it looked like I was giving all these directions. I was the strict person about this, which really does go against everything in my personality. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything that much. It’s hard to care about testing, which took me away from working with students.

Lauren 6:40
I remember feeling so absolutely defeated because when I went to talk to my principal, he just didn’t hear me or see me. I remember turning around leaving his office and crying. I have only cried a handful of times in this job as a high school counselor, and this was one of those times I just knew that counting test booklets, sharpening pencils, writing procedures for teachers. It just wasn’t my skill set. It wasn’t a good use of my gifts. And now I am a big proponent for being a team player. I would never just not do something because I was a snowflake and I just didn’t feel like it aligned with my gifts, like I am going to put my head down and I’m gonna work hard. I am not saying I could not do something hard. It was just this feeling of being misunderstood, knowing that this wasn’t the role of a counselor, and feeling like I had no help and no support. I was on an island.

Lauren 7:31
And a lot of you feel that way right now, like what I just described is how you go to work every day. You feel like nobody hears you, nobody sees you, and you’re doing things that are outside of your scope and outside of what your responsibility should be. I hope you know it can get better. This is not everywhere. It’s not every school. It’s not every administration. This was not my experience forever. It partially had to do with the principal, and when the principal shifted and the district initiative shifted, everyone started advocating for counselors a little bit more to have less of those non counseling duties.

Lauren 8:08
I will say I did during this season, put my head down and do what I was supposed to. And there was a push to have administrators come in and take that role of testing coordinator off of the counselors, but it was a slow grind. Let me tell you, like even though they put the title on an assistant principal, they didn’t want to be trained. They didn’t want to do it either. It was so hard, a real slow burn, to get that responsibility off of our counselors.

Lauren 8:39
Next, I remember a very specific time when my principal, who I loved so dearly, sat us down for a meeting. It was like our team meeting, and he was going to come to it. He was sort of coming to us as a mouthpiece for the teachers, but I also knew that he was a huge advocate for us as counselors, and he wanted to support us, but he basically sat us down and said, okay, the teachers want you to have duty in the hallways just like they have. They feel like it’s unfair that you all are not doing that part of the job that they are doing, that they have to give out some of their planning time to do it. And he basically was like, tell me why you cannot do this. Like he knew in his heart that we shouldn’t be doing it, but he was like, I need something to go back to them and tell them.

Lauren 9:27
So we laid it all out there. We said we are doing crisis management. If we’re on duty in the hallway and we have to leave because there’s a crying student, or there is an absolute emergency where there’s a safety issue with a student, if you want us to leave that spot in the hallway that we are supposed to be manning and watching and checking passes, if we walk away, are you okay with that? Is that okay that you’re not gonna have that person there? Because chances are we’re gonna get tied over in a meeting, or we’re gonna be in a crisis situation, or we’re not going to be able to report to that spot. So if you’re okay with that, then sure. And we said we have a very specialized skill set that not anyone could just jump in and handle that crisis situation with a student who is wanting to end their life. Okay, if you have another body who could stand in the hallway and check hall passes, that feels a little more generalized that I’m gonna say anyone could do.

Lauren 10:25
And then, as counselors, it feels like we just have to be available for walk ins. You know, we have people scheduling appointments, and that would be really hard to do, to block off a big chunk of time every single day to sit in the hallway when there are parents who want to come in and talk to us, or who are making appointments to come in and talk to us. It just felt silly to have to say to us that, yeah, you must be available to people who are walking in. You must be available for people to be able to make appointments with you, but then to say, Nope, you’re actually going to use your time sitting in the hallway here.

Lauren 11:00
So we got out of that real quick. It was something that we had never had on our plate before. And then when it was brought to our principal to potentially put that on our plate, we came in with a PowerPoint ready to say why we couldn’t do it and what we would be doing instead. And he went back and reported, and they backed down when they realized, yeah, I don’t want to be the one having those conversations with students in case of emergency.

Lauren 11:27
So he, our principal, walked away from that and basically said, okay, then I want you to be visible when you can. I want teachers to see you in the hallways and to be talking with those students when you’re not doing this duty position. I want you to be with students all the other times. Don’t be the person who’s sitting in their office just doing all the paperwork. I want you to get to do what we hired you to do, which, let me tell you, feels really good as a counselor, to have that kind of support. He basically was like, I want you to be doing the things that make your program a ramp worthy program. He said, I will cut these non counseling duties if I can have you working on board, everybody on board to have a program that really serves students that we can be proud of.

Lauren 12:12
And I think it’s inevitable that in high school, you’re going to have a lot of those administrative duties, more so than elementary and middle. Now, that’s a generalized assumption. My only experience in elementary and middle is in my internships. I have never had a full time job in either of those. But my perception is that high school has a little bit more of your basic paperwork, your spreadsheets to manage, reports to fill out and submit, letters of recommendation to write, 504s to manage, write, print, schedule, disseminate. You can keep that list going, I’m sure. I’ve never been in one of those other level roles, but I’m pretty confident that high school counseling does have a lot of this.

Lauren 12:52
So let’s first accept that like that’s gonna come with the territory. But let’s also be proud that we get to work with the coolest students. I know I’m a little biased here. I won’t be too braggy that high school counseling is the absolute best. But if you’re listening to this, chances are you probably think this is true too. I would gladly take a few of those type of non counseling duties, the administrative paperwork type stuff, if it meant that in exchange I got to keep working with teenagers. I think it’s a small trade off that I’m willing to take.

Lauren 13:25
Okay, so how do we advocate for our time as a counselor with administration? It could totally depend on where your administration is coming from, what the culture at your school is like, but I think if you are going to have the opportunity to get a new principal or any new administrators, this is your shot. I don’t want you to miss it. You only get one shot. Okay? You have a new principal, you have a new administrator. Use the beginning of the year presentation that I have in my TPT store and offer to do that in front of your principal or your administrators in some sort of team meeting. If they can hear about what you do and what your role is, everybody’s gonna be clearer up front.

Lauren 14:08
I also like to think about sharing my calendar with these people, these important stakeholders, and you know this means that you actually have to use your calendar. You can’t just share a blank calendar with them. But when you have that sort of transparency with your stakeholders, and I’m talking the people that you’re working closely with, those administrators, maybe department heads, I don’t know who needs to see it. You could have a different one for the public that’s public facing, and a different one for administrators or your clerk in your office. But I found that the more transparent I was or the more outspoken I was about trying to be open about what I do, then the more I was able to dispel myths about what was actually going on behind the scenes. Of course, you cannot be sharing what you’re talking about and who you’re seeing, but I just found that by being as transparent as I could be within Re. Reason that people couldn’t assume what I was doing was what they made up in their mind.

Lauren 15:06
And I totally understand being on the other side of this mentality, like I’ve been the person who assumes all the way down the storyline and make something up until I come up with what I think is rational in my head, because I don’t have all the information at hand. And I would even say in my marriage, a phrase that we use a lot in our marriage, is believing the best. We try and believe the best in each other. And I think that that can be taken into the workplace too.

Lauren 15:35
Now I do know not everybody is going to do this job or their job in a school with complete integrity, some people are going to be difficult to work with, like, that is a real thing, and so that is hard to believe the best of those people. But I want to try and give people the benefit of the doubt. I want to hope that people are going to work with integrity and are going to say what they are doing behind the scenes. So hear me out. This is not a plea for toxic positivity. I know not everybody is going to be the best. I know that we cannot believe the best about everybody, but this is a mental shift. If you find yourself always thinking the worst about somebody’s work ethic or what they’re doing, if you haven’t taken the time or energy to understand the bigger picture or understand what makes them tick and what kinds of things they like doing as a counselor, like if you’re assuming the worst about your teammates or your administrators, I think doing some deep digging into your own thoughts and opinions about them and their work standard would be a good thing to consider.

Lauren 16:37
When I talked about sharing your calendar and using your calendar, if you found yourself saying, Well, I don’t really use my calendar, and that is a struggle for you, that time management and calendar piece of your department and your role is a struggle, then I would encourage you to go back and listen to the episode I did just a couple weeks ago with my friend Casey Ranger. She had some great tips about time management and batching things and blocking off your schedule and getting things done. So I’ll definitely link that in the show notes for you.

Lauren 17:08
The last strategy I want to mention about your non counseling tasks and how to just manage them make them a little bit more bearable, would be outsourcing them. Of course, we would like to outsource them out of our building, not even have to think about them, outsource them out of our brain, and not even have to bring them to the forefront. But I’m talking about using people in your building who are either offering to help or who could take on something else that is more aligned with what they’re doing. And so think about some of the tasks that maybe you do that aren’t directly student centered, or that take away from the time that you could be using with students directly. And then think about the people around you who you could help bring in to help support those things.

Lauren 17:50
So here’s one big area that I felt like I could take off my plate if I could come up with somebody to help me. Some of those 504 duties. We know them. We love them. When I looked at my calendar and how I was spending my time, this took up a huge chunk of time, and it felt like parts of this were pretty repetitive, like emailing teachers, scheduling a meeting, confirming with parents, sending calendar invites. And so here is where I brought in my counseling clerk. We had a clerk or secretary who sat in our office, and you know, she could do a lot of tasks for us that were not counseling related, but supported us as counselors. Now, I had to be organized on my end to make this happen, and so when she was doing things like scheduling, she was having to look at my calendar, so I had to keep that up to date, and I had to put in every meeting that I had and every appointment that I had and when I was going off campus to train for something, in order for her to know when I was available to make that happen.

Lauren 18:52
This was a game changer for me. I just felt like I was doing a lot of behind the scenes communication, which I don’t mind doing. I like to communicate, but it was just a lot, and it felt like something that someone else could do if I found the right person with the right skill set. And let me tell you, our clerk was the right person. She made it happen. It made those meetings so much more bearable, because when I was sitting down to actually concentrate on my 504 responsibilities, do you know what it was? It was sitting down with the student, the parent and a teacher, where I was being the one who was running the meeting, talking, kind of doing counseling type things in a meeting type setting. All of the behind the scenes stuff was taken care of by someone else.

Lauren 19:36
Another thing that came to light when I looked at my calendar where I thought, hmm, maybe somebody else could help us with this, was having to constantly stop what we were doing as we were enrolling new students and going and giving them a tour. Now, I love walking around the school with new students and chit chatting and showing them around, but at the beginning of each semester, when you have lots of students waiting to enroll, and they are trying to get into class, it almost felt like a frivolous thing to walk them around the school. And I say that like if I put myself in the student’s shoes, yes, that is very important. I would want to walk around and know where the auditorium was or where the cafeteria was or where the bathroom was. But is there somebody else in the school who could help with that.

Lauren 20:20
So we thought maybe we could have some students partner with us that feels like something that is not super private, doesn’t violate any FERPA violations. We would have students come in and essentially be a peer leader or peer mentor, be a friend to a new student, and help connect them to clubs and the basic things that they might need to know around the school. It was really cool to watch those friendships blossom by equipping students to be leaders in the school and be welcoming faces, smiling faces to new students.

Lauren 20:54
So in the past, where I would have to sit down with a family, make a schedule, then take them and walk them all the way around the school, I could almost pass them off to a student. I’m helping equip a student to be a bolder, more confident leader in our school, and I’m helping these two students connect and make a peer relationship happen. Hence peer leaders were born. I have a whole episode on how to build out a program like this, and a TPT resource that has all the important pieces done for you. So I’ll link those in the show notes as well. I think that’s a very practical how to episode, if you’re thinking, wow, I could equip some students in my school to do something like this for other new students.

Lauren 21:37
And then lastly, a place that I don’t want you to miss in terms of outsourcing, would be taking on a counseling intern. If you have not taken on a high school counseling intern, yet, this may be the sign that you need to do so. Yes, it is real work to teach someone and to give them feedback and to have them kind of shadowing you and taking the reins on some things. However, there are so many benefits to furthering the profession through your influence as a supervisor to an intern. I talk all about this in episode 134, what I learned from supervising interns. It was not easy.

Lauren 22:13
I do just want to take a minute and highlight though, when you’ve got some good synergy going with you and an intern, you can multiply yourself. And I’m not saying put all the non counseling duties on them. That’s definitely not the goal, but you can use them to multiply your direct counseling duties, because you’re in it to make an impact with students, right? And so if you care about making those direct hours happen more for your caseload, with an intern, you can do more classroom lessons, more small groups, more individual counseling sessions.

Lauren 22:44
You also get the perspective of someone who’s eager to learn right now, and then, you also have their connections to troubleshoot anything that you’re going through with a student, with their professor, their peers and you. You get to be learning too. You get to continue being a student when you have an intern alongside you.

Lauren 23:04
So I want you to look for opportunities to take on more direct counseling hours so that you can make an impact on students just like you signed up to do. This doesn’t mean all of your non counseling duties will disappear altogether, but if you’re making small efforts to shift your own mentality around your transparency, around your calendar and your responsibilities, you may win over some of those big decision makers to get them to realize you are best serving students in the places where you are especially trained to serve students as a counselor, managing sensitive issues that not everyone in the school is equipped to do.

Lauren 23:40
If you’re a new or aspiring high school counselor, I’d encourage you to bop over and grab the new counselor playlist that I put together for you. It’s a list of curated podcast episodes that I think will be perfect for you as you’re embarking on a new journey. I have that listed in the show notes for you. If you are a veteran and this episode was just refreshing for you, a breath of fresh air so that you can think through some of those tedious old tasks you do, and then envision a world that has less of them, I’m so glad you listened to this episode. I hope it serves you in some new ways. A great free resource for you would be those copy and paste advocacy email templates I have for you to send over to your administrators and to your staff that advocate for what you do. I challenge you to send them to your people and see what happens next. Go to counselorclique.com/challenge and you can get those email templates sent right to your email.

Lauren 24:33
Thanks for listening. I’ll see you for another episode next week.

Lauren 24:37
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.