Highs and Lows of Working with Seniors with Brittany Slagle [Episode 140]

Lauren Tingle 0:00
Can you believe we’re interviewing our last counselor in this grade level series? I have a high school counselor with us today who loves working with seniors, and you are going to love hearing from her too.

Lauren Tingle 0:11
Brittany Slagle has been a high school counselor for nearly a decade, and has experience with all grade levels. She currently works at Tennessee High School in Bristol, Tennessee, and serves as their department chair. Their caseloads are broken down by grade level, and they rotate with their students in a cohort model. And this past year was their first year in this model, and Brittany had seniors, and she loved it. She’ll rotate down to freshmen this coming year and will stay with them through graduation.

Lauren Tingle 0:38
Brittany has a passion for college and career counseling, but has recently found an interest in finding ways to incorporate the Tennessee social personal competencies into academic classes outside of work. She is a mom to a three year old, and a bonus mom to a 16 year old. Getting to talk to Brittany was such a gift you’re gonna love hearing a little bit about what she loves about working with seniors, and she also shares about what’s hard about working with them. I think she offers a realistic peek into the stressful moments, but also the fun, celebratory moments as well. Let’s hear from Brittany.

Lauren Tingle 1:50
Hey, Brittany, I’m so excited to have you on High School Counseling Conversations to talk about our group of seniors and what it’s like to work with senior students.

Brittany 1:59
I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Lauren Tingle 2:01
Yeah, well, I am pretty open about this, but I love working with seniors. They’re my favorite group. Like, if you can have favorites for me, it’s seniors. And your model is like a cohort model, right? So you just had seniors, and now you’re about to go back to, like, the farthest thing from seniors.

Brittany 2:20
That is right. We had, before this last school year, the one that wrapped up, we had the Alpha caseload breakdown. So I’m one of four counselors, and we kind of just did a shakeup, and I was the winner, winner with seniors. And I say that jokingly, but I love seniors too, so they’re my favorite. So hopefully none of my current freshmen hear this, but I love.

Lauren Tingle 2:43
Well and they’ll be seniors too one day, you know, and you got to get to know them. But seniors are just so special.

Brittany 2:50
They are, but it has been. It has been very, very fun. I’ve really enjoyed it

Lauren Tingle 2:54
well since we’re just talking about how they’re our favorite. What is your favorite part of working with seniors? Like, why do you love working with them so much?

Brittany 3:01
Gosh, I think, you know, prior to us being broken down in this case model, whatever we call it, I had, I’d always had seniors. So we had, we were Alpha, and we had, you know, freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, within that Alpha, our letters. And so I’d always worked with seniors a little bit, and I always kind of thought they were my favorite.

Brittany 3:24
But then whenever I got the whole senior class, I was like, yes, like, this is I’m gonna love this. I’m gonna be so stressed out, which was that was very true, but I really did. I loved just feeling helpful. And I think that’s just the counselor in me, you know, I want to be helpful. I want to be productive. I felt like I was helping these kids make make decisions that were impacting their future.

Brittany 3:24
Whether it be something as small as helping them find their prom dress or something as large as helping them get this really big scholarship and helping with the essays and the interviews and stuff like that. So I really just, I feel like it’s a whole spectrum of things that students come to you whenever you’re their senior person. And I really loved just being able to just have any kind of impact with them.

Lauren Tingle 4:14
Yeah, and those are all, like, really big things, like we said, whether it’s the prom dress and they’re figuring out, like, how to, you know, a connection the community to, like, help get them the prom dress they never thought that they were going to have, or their next big thing that they’re moving on to, you get to, like, see the fruit of the big decisions. In, like, ninth and 10th grade, it all feels so far away and still very foreign. But 12th grade, you really see all of that coming to fruition, which is really fun.

Brittany 4:40
Yeah, it is. It really, is. I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun.

Lauren Tingle 4:43
So having all seniors this year, what does it look like when you’re helping them? Like, I assume you have a pretty big caseload. If you’re working with all the entire senior class. Are you meeting with them individually? Are you touching base with them in big group meetings? Like, community style throughout the year? What is touching base with your seniors look like throughout the year?

Brittany 4:45
All of those things that you just mentioned. We do senior meetings in the fall. So I think one of the biggest advantages that I had was coming into the new breakdown was I actually got to register those, I guess, whenever they were juniors. So I got to register them to kind of get to know their graduation plans. So I had a little bit of a touch point with them prior to their senior year.

Brittany 5:28
And then rolling into senior year, we did senior meetings, and those were kind of just like a one on one, kind of like a self directed thing. So whatever they needed, whatever they had questions about, we had a dedicated 30 minutes together. They could bring in their family or anybody they wanted to, to kind of help, you know, ping pong ideas and ask questions.

Brittany 5:48
I did a lot of whole group presentations. So I ended up with, I think, at our highest we had some early grads, but I think we ended up having about 290 seniors this year. So I had a lot of large group presentations. We have homeroom every day, which some people love and some people hate. I’m on the the end of the spectrum that loves homeroom for counseling. It just makes it really easy to get in there and, you know, give whatever content we’ve got to go over. So I met them in homeroom.

Lauren Tingle 6:17
Would you kind of like, dart in between? Like there’s a lot of different of their classes, and you’re popping in to, like, give some handouts or show your face. Like, what did that look like? Because you’re one person.

Brittany 6:27
Yeah, so I, I’m very blessed here to have a, his title is, goodness, it’s a college access advisor, and he was here two days a week. He’s not employed by our school system, but it’s like an outside agency that really, really puts a lot of time and effort and energy into education.

Brittany 6:47
So they’ve got a bunch of these counselors that are all over the high schools in in our area. So I had, I had one, and he was here for two days. So he and I kind of tag teamed a lot. So if I couldn’t make it into homeroom, he was going to homeroom, or he was helping this group of students with these applications or whatnot. So we kind of tag team that was really lucky to have him in that capacity.

Brittany 7:08
But yeah, we just any opportunity I could plug my face in there with with the students I did, because there’s always information. They’re always having questions about something. So even if it was like a just like a quick presentation about, oh, gosh, I don’t know.

Lauren Tingle 7:24
How to add a counselor on the Common app or something like the thing that it’s always coming up with multiple students where you need to show them something. I imagine that would be a great time to do it.

Brittany 7:33
Yeah, one of my favorite things that I got to do with these seniors that I had never done in the past was I held like, lunch workshops. So we had in our cafeteria there’s, like, this little it’s a tiny little room. And I thought it was a closet for the longest time. And I just so happened to be walking through there one day when the door was open, and I had this idea, this light bulb moment, like, how can I use this room? I think I I’m gonna claim this room.

Lauren Tingle 7:56
No one else is using it. I mean, you don’t find those rooms at a school anywhere.

Brittany 8:00
It had like a table and two chairs, and in my vision, I was like, this is going to be perfect for what I need it to be. So I ended up just kind of pushing out some different topics to the seniors. We talked about, like first time college students, if you’re a first time college student, we kind of met in there during lunches, and kind of looked at what the college going process was.

Brittany 8:22
Being a senior, there are so many deadlines and due dates. So if we were approaching a different deadline for this scholarship or this school, we would kind of get all of us together in that room and just kind of knock out a bunch of stuff at once. So I think that was probably one of the best things that I did for my students and for my own mental health was just have those little different workshops available. I really enjoyed that.

Lauren Tingle 8:45
I think that could be really encouraging to the counselor listening who feels like maybe they’ve never either done small groups in their school before, and they wanted that just more small group feel with some students, or they feel like they can’t get students to commit to something, you know, longer term, or even, like, six or seven sessions.

Lauren Tingle 9:03
To have that flexibility of, hey, drop in for lunch. You know, the students who are coming actually want to be there, and they want the help. And you get some, like, targeted interventions, or whatever you’re delivering is exactly what that group needs, because you’re advertising it, they’re showing up, and it makes it easy for them to access it. Like you said, real estate wise, in the school, it’s right near where they’re eating lunch, or they see it and they know, okay, that’s where Miss Slagle is going to be. So we’re going to pop in there for the help that we need.

Brittany 9:31
Yeah, it was really great. We even had one of our, one of our financial aid professionals in the area. She’s very well known in our area. I had her come in and do a couple of sessions too, with students who just weren’t really sure about the financial aid process. So, I mean, we really covered a lot of ground, and I think it was so beneficial. Our school newspaper even, like, came and interviewed me about about it, because it was just brand new.

Lauren Tingle 9:54
it was newsworthy. They were like, what’s this going on that we need everyone to know about?

Brittany 9:59
Yeah, so I really enjoyed that. I think that’s definitely something that I’m going to try to incorporate with freshmen, obviously not not with as specific things, but I think there’s a bunch of topics that no matter what grade level you’re working with, you can, if you have the space and the capacity, I think you can, you can just about make it work with any grades. But especially with seniors that helped out tremendously. 10 out of 10 would recommend.

Lauren Tingle 10:22
Yeah, and already know some of those topics, like you said, with seniors that are definitely going to hit, like we know we need to do this in the fall when they as soon as they get back to school, because they’re asking about it. But with ninth or 10th grade or 11th grade, you might be tossing some of those topics out and seeing if they stick.

Lauren Tingle 10:38
And maybe you get, I feel like that’s how I started a stress management group is I one on the needs assessment they were all saying yes, this is what we need. But two who actually signed up and came like that was interesting, whether it was a certain grade level or just girls or just guys, or when they were being held.

Lauren Tingle 10:54
Like that lunchtime time is a great time just to test some things out and see do you like teaching that material? Do you feel confident in helping students with this? And then are they liking it? And do we need more of it? Like, say, Everybody comes to the, I was gonna say the anger management one, I don’t know if everyone was gonna come to an anger management one, but you have some topic that ends up being really popular, but you don’t really know about it until you do it. Then it gives you, like a jumping off point for other things.

Brittany 11:20
Oh yeah.

Lauren Tingle 11:21
Well, that’s exciting that you have that already in your mind. Like this worked well with seniors, and now I’m going to use it with a different group of students.

Brittany 11:27
They’ll look a little different, but yeah.

Lauren Tingle 11:30
What would you say was the hardest part of working with seniors this year for you?

Brittany 11:33
Oh gosh, I think to me, there are two answers to this question. The first was a more personal part of it, feeling like you had to be the expert with everything. And that might just be a personality trait of mine.

Lauren Tingle 11:46
No, I think everyone is intimidated by that when they work with seniors, like, because you have those parents who want the answers to everything. You don’t want to look dumb in front of a student, like, you should be the like, you quote, should be the expert. Like, there’s no way you can know everything for everyone, right?

Brittany 12:02
I think, I think that was the most intimidating part. Even though I had worked with seniors, I’ve always worked with seniors, so this coming school year will be the first year that I haven’t worked with seniors. So I think just having enough confidence in what I knew and my ability to figure out what I didn’t know that was, that was intimidating.

Brittany 12:21
Because I knew that I had, I mean, 75% of my caseload I didn’t know, so I knew the students that I had from the year prior, but, you know, the majority of them, we were just kind of figuring it out as we went and getting to know each other along the way. So I think that part, personally, was the hardest.

Brittany 12:38
But then also just the deadlines, and it being so busy, just in a practical, in a logistical way. Every week it was, it was okay, we’ve got to get to this deadline. I’ve got these 40 kids that this applies to, and then that deadline would pass, and I would kind of take a breath, like, Okay, on to the next thing. Like, what’s next, what’s happening right now? And that was, while it was fun, and it made the year go by so fast. This was the fastest year I’ve ever, ever worked through It just it was, it was a lot, because I just felt kind of like I was just riding that senior wave, you know?

Lauren Tingle 13:16
It’s intense, it’s high stakes. Those deadlines all feel very important, because they are, but you’re the one shouldering a lot of that, because you feel every single one of those deadlines, you know, like one student might just have that October 1 or whatever it is for them, but you have all of them. How do you keep yourself organized with all this?

Brittany 13:36
So I think the best thing I’m a paper planner person, so I have a big desk calendar that I just at the beginning of the year, just kind of knowing what to expect with seniors. I just wrote all those deadlines and due dates and the big things that I knew about. I wrote those down, try to plan for it as best as I could.

Brittany 13:57
I feel like this first round with just seniors was, I’m gonna be honest, I feel like I was flying by the seat of my pants a lot of the time, but taking good notes about what worked, what didn’t work, deadlines, of things that I had forgotten about. Yeah, I’ve got a whole notebook full of things to prepare me for the next time I’m with seniors.

Lauren Tingle 14:17
What I wish I would have done, or would have known or put on my calendar.

Brittany 14:21
Yeah. But I think, I mean, overall, I feel like, I feel like I stayed pretty organized, I stayed pretty on top of things, and we graduated.

Lauren Tingle 14:29
Right, when you can say, Okay, we are done, we made it. There were some bumps along the way, but we made it. And what advice would you give to someone who’s nervous about stepping into that really high stakes scenario?

Lauren Tingle 14:42
So whether they have had a portion of seniors before, and it’s their first time having a whole group of them, or they’re new school counselor, it’s just their first time working with seniors, like all of those things you mentioned about the the imposter syndrome of like being able to work with seniors, what advice now coming out on the other end would you give to that person? Or yourself you know, stepping in?

Brittany 15:01
I would say this is going to be the busiest year of your career. It’s going to be the most intimidating. You have to show yourself grace, because it is so easy to get it’s so easy to get swept up in the deadlines, in the due dates, in the applications, in the helping you figure out your future. That’s so intimidating, and it’s so easy to get caught up in that, and when you get caught up in that, you forget to enjoy it.

Brittany 15:25
And there are so many fun things that these kids are doing that, gosh, I never even heard of some of these opportunities. And I wanted to just make sure that I was super intentional with those students to kind of just be there, be their support, be there to celebrate with them and not feel so bogged down by the by the other stuff. I really, I think that’s probably the biggest thing, is just don’t get so bogged down in the administrative part of it that you forget to enjoy what brought you to counseling in the first place. These kids, and they’re awesome opportunities, that’s a that’s a big thing.

Lauren Tingle 15:59
That’s great advice, because I feel like with seniors, of all students like you have, you’re mailing off, you know, state scholarship stuff, you’re checking their diplomas to make sure their names are spelled correctly, like, there’s so many like, little details that are paperwork driven. And like you said, administrative like you have to shut your door and concentrate on these really important things.

Lauren Tingle 16:20
And then I would find those days I would just be so drained because you didn’t have any of the relational stuff, like that, fun celebratory stuff, that the reason you got into it is to work with students, and so pausing and remembering to celebrate those wins, or, Hey, I’m just gonna go check in with some students right now and like, see what’s going on and see what they’re doing, because I had a day of a lot of that administrative stuff that’s not that fun.

Brittany 16:42
Yeah, I think another piece of advice that I would give to is to not be afraid to ask for help. That was something that I had to learn, like at built that plane as we were flying it, because I’m not good at asking for help.

Lauren Tingle 16:56
So like help in terms of, like information that you don’t know? Or, hey, I need somebody else to come in and help me with this meeting. Because, like, crowd control, it’s going to be a lot. Or, like, what kinds of help did you find yourself reaching out to others for?

Brittany 16:57
So I think one of the most intimidating parts for me was the was Common app. And I think all high school counselors, we all feel Common app. All throughout the year, it seems. I had 117 students on my common app. So those required letters of recommendation, so and whenever the deadlines, I mean it, some of them lined up perfectly with really busy times here at school too.

Brittany 17:35
Yeah, because that’s the way it works. The first big deadline for Common app that we had coincided with our in school ACT day. And I remember just being so stressed out because that was, I guess it was our senior ACT day. We have two in school ACTs, the first was with seniors, and then the next was with juniors.

Lauren Tingle 17:54
Oh my goodness. And that Common app was with your senior deadline?

Brittany 17:57
Yeah, it matched up perfectly. And I remember going to one of my administrators and just being like, I have never asked for help before. So this feels really foreign to me, but I I really don’t need to be on this ACT schedule. Like, I don’t need to be doing it. I love doing it. I love that testing. Like it’s predictable. It’s I know I know what I’m doing.

Lauren Tingle 18:19
Like I can be a team player, and I have been in the past, and I understand they’re my students, but also this is another huge deadline for my students.

Brittany 18:27
Yeah, and I expected, you know, I’ve got a team of great administrators that are really understanding. And they were like, Yeah, whatever you need. Please don’t be hesitant to ask for help. And I was like, Okay, I did that, I did that.

Lauren Tingle 18:40
I asked for help. I got help. It worked, and I survived and came out stronger because of it.

Brittany 18:46
And I got a bunch of letters of recommendation done because of it. So that’s great. So be my my next piece of advice is just ask for help. There are plenty of people in the school. You do not have to be the person for everything, and you’ve got, I mean, there are things that you’ve got to do, and you can’t do everything.

Lauren Tingle 19:02
And honestly, there are going to be people that are better at certain things than you. You know what I mean? Like, that takes a lot of humility to say, I’m going to ask for help, and like, maybe they’ll do it better than me. I hope someone’s better at testing than I am, and then maybe it comes off your plate altogether, because somebody else realizes, like, yeah, that can be done by someone else.

Lauren Tingle 19:22
So that’s a stressful thing to run up against, like, two deadlines that you had no control over. It’s not like you accidentally even scheduled those things together that came from above you. So that’s, I’m glad that you got to get some help and be able to survive those because that’s very stressful, right?

Brittany 19:40
We just sailed right through it. Got all those Common apps done

Lauren Tingle 19:45
What was it like working with parents of seniors? And I know this can vary from school to school, but I feel like parents are probably most involved in ninth grade and 12th grade. That was always the trend that I saw. And so what was that like with your cohort of students and their parents?

Brittany 20:42
So I think, I think for me, this might look a little different, because this was our first year implementing this model. But I didn’t know 75% of the families, so I think the hardest part was reassuring them that their kids best interest was in my heart, and I was gonna move mountains for those kids to help them with whatever I could. But just establishing that trust, I think was, I don’t want to say hard, because it wasn’t hard, but it was my biggest priority, I guess.

Lauren Tingle 21:13
Well I don’t ever understand why I feel like I was saying that track all the time too. Of I’m on your team. I want to see your students succeed. I promise I wouldn’t be in this job if I didn’t love students. Like, I’m not out to get anyone. I’m not out here to, like, sabotage anything.

Lauren Tingle 21:31
When you get the wrong person who with the wrong impression, you’re like, Wait, I don’t understand why you would think I’m against you right now, because I work too many hours and I don’t get paid enough to hate what I’m doing. I love students, I promise you,.

Brittany 21:44
Yeah, I think, I think that was, that was probably the, the biggest thing on my to do list was just to make sure that they understood that I love their kids, not as much as they love their kids. No one will ever but that I they could trust me. And I think once we, once I was able to meet them and get to know them and talk to them, I think that was a very natural thing.

Brittany 22:10
And I mean, I feel like a lot of them, we kind of ended up becoming friends too, you know, because I think there’s so many, there’s so many different things that goes on senior year, the highs, the lows, the ups, the downs, the the emotions, the disappointments, and I got to be a part in that ride with them.

Brittany 22:27
And, you know, sometimes I had one student who didn’t get into the the college that she wanted to go to go to, and the mom and I were both just commiserating over the phone like, I don’t understand this. This doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, here’s a here’s what we can do, you know? So I feel like it became very collaborative very easily once we just kind of broke the ice and and just went for it.

Lauren Tingle 22:50
Yeah, those relational models of us, either by alpha or by cohort, like staying with the same group, really lend itself to that. Like you hope that by senior year, you know the families, they know you, so you don’t have to spend all that time. But if you’re switching up your caseload model, and you kind of start all already from like a little behind, because you see what that could be with your 25% that you already knew you’re like, Okay, now I need to get that other 75% to trust me and to know me, and same thing for me to them, like, you want that same relationship with them. So I imagine that would be hard to start the year off like, kind of feeling like you’re behind relationally with just that group of them.

Brittany 23:29
Yeah, I do think helping register them their junior year was a big, big, big positive, because a lot of a lot of the times, you know, we do one on one registration meetings with all of our students, all the counselors do. And a lot of times, they come in their freshman year for their registration meeting, or rising freshmen come in for that meeting, and then you don’t hear from them until senior year, and then they show up again, and there they are. So I got, I think, having having the opportunity to register the juniors that were going to be seniors with their families. I think that was, that was definitely helpful.

Lauren Tingle 24:05
And so did y’all do that because you knew that you were switching to that model already? Yep, that’s great. And you know, like, then they can’t have that conversation of they signed me up for this, or they don’t do the summer class that they were supposed to. You’re like, no, no, we’ve already set some accountability here. They is me. I signed you up for it, with you sitting in the room. Everyone signed off on it. So we’re already starting off knowing what we need for graduation.

Lauren Tingle 24:32
And I mean, that would be huge in stepping into being a counselor of some students who maybe you didn’t know already. So did you have seniors who didn’t make it to graduation? Meaning, you know, they didn’t do what they were supposed to and they didn’t get that diploma? And kind of what did that look like for you and your caseload this year?

Brittany 24:50
Yeah, so before we get into that, I do want to celebrate, because we had the highest graduation rate we’ve ever had. It’s almost 96% which is. Is, which is really great. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but you know, with that, you definitely do have students that that just disappear. We make every attempt possible, but some kids you just can’t reach.

Brittany 25:11
I had a student that came from outside of my alpha caseload that I had inherited with the the new breakdown, who had zero credits. And I mean, he I’ve never experienced that. I’ve been at this for nearly a decade. He had no credits and absolutely no interest in like, at that point he turned 18 in September.

Lauren Tingle 25:34
You’re like, how, how are you still here? You’ve been here for four years. I don’t understand.

Brittany 25:38
Like he showed up every day, but he just didn’t do anything when he was here. It was bonkers. But, yeah, zero credits. But, you know, try as I might, they’re just he had no interest, and I can’t do it for him. And I think realizing that there’s only so much you can do to drag students and you know, the rest is on them. And that’s notes kind of harsh, but that’s kind of life.

Brittany 26:02
You know, there’s going to be, there’s going to be kids that that make it, and there’s going to be kids that don’t, but for those that don’t, I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure that we can intervene where we can but there are just a few that you’re just not going to reach.

Lauren Tingle 26:15
And when you see that on paper to start the year, you’re like, Okay, I assume other people have tried too, like, let me see what I can do. But there comes a point where we might not have enough time to get that many credits, because there’s a reason we’re here for four years to get all of those credits, and we might need to find something else for you to do.

Brittany 26:33
Yeah and you know, he, he left peacefully, he turned 18.

Lauren Tingle 26:37
And sailed off into the sunset. And you know, it might not be his time to do that. There might be, it might be years down the road that, again, we’re talking about, like seeing fruit from what we’re doing in 12th grade, we get to see a lot of that, but some of those students aren’t ready for that yet, like you’re still laying some foundational things for them to come back later.

Lauren Tingle 26:56
I mean, not to your school, but, you know, get a GED later down the road, or some adult ed later down the road that if that’s what they need at that point, maybe it’s not right now, and that’s really hard to say to yourself when, when there’s a lot riding on that, when your district is like no graduation rate is important, because it is. It is so is like looking at a student as a whole and being like that, it’s not in the cards for them right now.

Lauren Tingle 27:22
Yeah, well, that is awesome about your graduation rate being so high, and that probably feels good, you know, to you as the senior counselor, like, obviously, there’s a lot of people who are helping make that happen, and that’s students moving in the right direction to you, but that is something worth celebrating.

Brittany 27:38
Yeah, I think so. We had a graduation coach this year, which is the first year we’ve had a very intentional graduation coach. So she and I worked a lot together.

Lauren Tingle 27:50
What kinds of things would she do?

Brittany 27:52
So she if students kind of stopped showing up, she would reach out to them, she would do home visits. She would help them kind of make a plan, especially if they had online classes that they or credit recovery. She worked really close with them. A lot of them had weird schedules, so they weren’t expected to be here from 730, to 235, days a week.

Brittany 28:14
It’s a very intentional program that works around what the students need. So if they’re working a full time job, then, you know, she can kind of make different arrangements for them, just depending on what their life scenario is. So I think she and I working in tandem with one another, that’s one of the biggest reasons why our graduation rate was the highest it’s ever been. I don’t know if it’s the highest it’s ever been, it’s the highest it’s been since I’ve been here. But I think that was one of the big reasons, and just something to totally celebrate, because there were so many students that she was able to really help.

Lauren Tingle 28:48
And every single one of those matters in terms of your cohort and the students that you’re serving, but also with that graduation rate. I mean, it comes down to every single one of them is going to walk across the stage, but that sounds really cool that her interventions and y’all working together, those were, like, creative things that you probably problem solved depending on the student and their family situation and their working situation and what they still needed to graduate.

Lauren Tingle 29:14
Because it’s like, some of those students are not going to be the ones who you’re just forcing to be at school, just to take a class, just because they don’t need it. Like, you know, when students are I need to drop this. I don’t need it for graduation, and it’s just because it’s what the rules are. But like, the ones who you’re really dragging across, you’re like, Okay, we’re just gonna do what we need to do to get you to graduate. Maybe the rules don’t apply to you to get you there.

Brittany 29:36
Yeah she did. She did a great job with that, and she has a back. She was one of our math teachers, and wanted to come out of the classroom in a different capacity so she could really help with those senior level math classes. It was just, it was a beautiful, a beautiful duo.

Lauren Tingle 29:51
What a great partnership. And will she stay doing that now with the other counselor who’s rolling up?

Brittany 29:56
Yep, she will.

Lauren Tingle 29:57
And that is, that is another way. To help someone who is coming into that role, who either hasn’t worked with seniors in a while, or who has never worked with seniors, to have somebody who is a graduation coach who just did this last year, you know, even though your roles and responsibilities might look different, it’s somebody who’s done it before, who you kind of get to work alongside and say, Well, this is what we tried last year, and it worked. Or I think you’re supposed to be doing this at this time of year. That’s kind of nice to have.

Lauren Tingle 30:23
What were your administrators like? When did you work with just one senior administrator? Were they broken up by grade level or alpha or like, what does that look like at your school?

Brittany 30:34
So it’s, it’s a little weird. I think we’ve got, we have several administrators. We have two administrators that do discipline, and they are with seniors and freshmen and juniors and sophomores, I think.

Lauren Tingle 30:49
First, let me say, maybe you’re gonna tell me more about this, but I don’t get really tired of just doing discipline. That would be a and maybe that’s why we’re counselors and we’re not administrators. But man, I’d be tired of that. Yeah, they do.

Brittany 31:00
Yeah, they do. They work primarily with discipline, with the different grades. So that administrator and I worked together. I’ve got to give it to my seniors, though they were pretty good. It was and they made, I always jokingly say they made my job really easy. It was not easy at all, but in terms of behaviors and things like that. We had a few hiccups along the way that I had to work with that administrator with but for the most part, you know, they were had a pretty good year as far as behaviors. So I am very grateful for that. It was about as easy as it could go as far as behaviors.

Brittany 31:35
But I did work with that administrator. Now, if there was some other stuff going on, if it was like attendance, or, like a testing question, or like our we have an administrator for students with IEPs and one with 504 so if it was a question related to those things, then of course I would go to them. I feel like I’ve got a pretty good relationship with our administrators. We’ve got a very close, close relationship between the counseling staff and the administrative staff. So if it was whoever was available, I asked questions to so it was, it was a good tag team with everyone at one point or another.

Lauren Tingle 32:08
That’s great when it feels like everyone is aligned with the same mission and vision for getting them graduated and knows what their role is, because it sounds like yours are kind of broken down by what they do, so you know who to go for in what situation? Yeah, that’s awesome and encouraging to hear, like, good communication, good teamwork, and then you get the highest graduation rate you’ve had in a while. So there you go. That’s the secret sauce. Like we can tie a bow on it, and everyone will have their highest graduation rate. Perfect.

Lauren Tingle 32:37
Is there anything you would have done differently, like looking back on the year with your seniors?

Brittany 32:41
Anything I would have done differently?

Lauren Tingle 32:44
You can say, No, it was the perfect year. All your hopes and dreams came true.

Brittany 32:48
Perfect? No. There are some things I would have done a little bit different. And I think really it’s just it gets into the the whole part of, you know, just getting so tied down and bogged down with the other things.

Brittany 33:01
I remember at different points where I was just just looking for something to celebrate, because it was just so busy. So I think, I think being more intentional with the relational part, that’s something that I would do differently, and I think I will do differently in the future.

Brittany 33:20
It was our first year, in this case, load. It was a lot of relationship building, couple that with all of the different senior things that happened naturally. And it was, it was hard. That was a hard part. So I do have plans whenever I roll around in three years, just to be able to incorporate some more fun things too, because I just, I didn’t have a lot of time to do that.

Lauren Tingle 33:41
Yeah, and knowing that that that is something that you personally need as a counselor to feel like, I love what I’m doing, maybe it’s worth even on a busy calendar, going ahead and like, putting a date on the calendar for each month you’re in school and like, we’re going to do something fun here, or something that you enjoy doing as a counselor.

Lauren Tingle 33:59
Whether that’s popping into the cafeteria and just like saying hey to kids or having some special treat, I don’t know, whatever you do to celebrate being with students and making sure that it happens, because, you know, things, especially the fun and good things, don’t happen when all the other stressful stuff is going on. So you have to like, which is funny, because you’re like that would that would seem like the thing I’m going to make time for, but it’s often the first to go.

Brittany 34:23
Oh, itt for a fact, it is just because everything just seems so emergent in that moment. You know, these due dates, they’ve got to get done. If they don’t, then feelings are going to get hurt. And sometimes it could be life changing.

Lauren Tingle 34:36
Yeah. Well, I hope that this was a helpful conversation for people who are about to work with seniors, or have done it, or it’s been a couple years, or whatever like, they’re clicking on this and they’re listening to it because they have some interest in working with 12th graders. And so is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you would either like to encourage people with or mention about working with seniors that I didn’t ask you about?

Brittany 34:59
Can we give a plug for your scholarship database? Because that helped me tremendously. We definitely use that, and I kind of tweaked it to to however we need it here.

Lauren Tingle 35:12
Yeah, that’s a free spreadsheet. I’ll link it in the show notes of this.

Brittany 35:15
Yes, it is so good, so beneficial, and really kind of helps, helps keep a visual of things. So that was something as far as scholarships that I leaned on. So I appreciate that resource. I know other senior school counselors will too, especially if you’re over scholarships. That was helpful for me, would recommend for others to use it as well. So thanks for creating that resource. We love a lot of your stuff here. So it’s really it’s really helpful for kids.

Lauren Tingle 35:39
I feel like even if you have juniors too, it’s helpful for them to see that visual of what’s coming. Because, you know, a lot of the same stuff is year after year happening in the same months, and it gives them a frame of reference for like, what’s to come. And they can see, okay, a lot of them are coming in these months and these months and and kind of highlight, they can kind of cater it to themselves and choose their own adventure on there, but you’re providing all the materials, and then they have to take the bait and do something with it.

Lauren Tingle 36:05
Well, Brittany, thank you for being on the podcast. This is such a delight to have you here.

Brittany 36:09
Thank you. I had a good time.

Lauren Tingle 36:10
I’ve linked that free scholarship spreadsheet in the show notes that Brittany mentioned. I hope it’s helpful for you and your students as well. It’s really cool. I’ll have to admit to hear Counselor Clique resources are out there in the wild, helping you and your students. I don’t always get to hear about that, so that’s always encouraging to me.

Lauren Tingle 36:30
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and to this series in general. If you find yourself entering into a season where you’re about to work with seniors or any of the other grade levels, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes. I’ll see you next week.