Counselors adapt to virtual environment

District counselors make mental health a priority for students

While students’ needs may not be any different during online learning, the staff responsible for looking out for their well-being have had to find different ways to keep up and make themselves present in a virtual setting.

In the Woodland School District, despite a limited number of students currently on campus, school counselors have been adapting their roles in an ever-changing academic environment, working harder than ever to ensure they meet their students’ needs.

Those needs change the older the students get. Most counselor interactions deal with the academic side of things at the high school level, such as dealing with grades, setting up class schedules, college and career readiness, and financial aid help. At the lower levels, the focus is more on kids in crisis or on personal social-emotional help.

Tafoya Elementary School counselor Connie Price has had her fair share of struggles.

According to Price, in normal times, her day would be determined by what happens on campus. There would usually be some student in some crisis for one reason or another, but these days unplanned interventions are a lot less frequent, mostly because of the lack of students and a recess break.

“Normally, when we are not in distance learning, I try to get out and go into classrooms regularly,” Price explained. “Kids know who I am throughout the campus. They know I’m someone they can talk to. If they have a peer issue, or a problem at home or with a friend, in school, they know I’m a safe person.”

Price, who has been in the district for the past nine years, feels that while counselors at each school site may have different tasks and responsibilities, but they all have similar issues.

“As an elementary school counselor, we don’t have to deal with the academic preparation that the high schoolers do, but we certainly have about the same level if not more of the social-emotional concerns,” Price said. “Trying to connect with kids virtually has been difficult.”

Woodland High School counselor Carla Serratos mentions that building lasting relationships with the students she helps has been challenging since the coronavirus pandemic made distance learning a necessity.

“When we are on campus, we can walk into classrooms, talk to students or pull them out of class,” Serratos said. “Online, I have jumped into the virtual classrooms to look for students, but it’s much more difficult to establish those relationships.”

Serratos still sees many students, sometimes daily, via appointments, but the amount of time it takes to set up a meeting and meet is not the same.

“There isn’t a day where I’m not busy seeing and counseling students,” Serratos said. “I just think it’s a slower process because now we must make an appointment. We are seeing the same amount of students.

It just takes more time. “

The school recently completed a college workshop that would normally take place in the Woodland High library.

“Our library would be filled, and we’d have a couple of days,” Serratos said. “We did it online instead, but it was difficult.”

Both Serratos and Price have noticed an increasing number of unmotivated students, likely tired by the seemingly never-ending screen time they endure. The same thing every day can get boring.

“Kids are COVID-19 fatigued like the rest of us,” Price said. “Even students that were good before and were very diligent have kind of lost their motivation. Kids are not showing up for class. They are not doing their work. Some of our best students are disappearing.”

While most are struggling, Price notes that there have been some success stories of students struggling in the past who have really flourished during distance learning.

“In some ways, it’s kind of the opposite world,” Price said. “Everyone is a different learner. We see it at every grade level.”

Another thing counselors and certified staff have collectively been working on is the district’s Mental Health Response Plan, which was presented during a Feb. 11 school board meeting.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to shut down mid-semester last March, students’ social and emotional well-being has been a hot topic during school board meetings. The presentation served as an update on how the district plans to tackle the issue and address students’ mental health needs.

Social-emotional learning or SEL is defined as teaching students coping skills, such as managing stress and taking care of their mental health. It will be different at every level. Elementary students will have different things to deal with than students at the high school level.

“I think there is more of an entire school focus, teachers included, on social-emotional learning with the students,” Serratos said. “I don’t think that was a thing before COIVD-19, so I think it brought it to the forefront. It’s something we have always needed, but now everyone is involved and taking part in it.”

According to the presentation, the students’ social-emotional needs were a top-five priority among stakeholders when drafting the Local Control and Accountability Plan along with academic intervention and support, English learner support, college and career readiness, and special education support.

“We had a plan to increase our social-emotional learning and socialemotional plan for several years now,” said Price. “I have been in education for 25 years now, and it has not had the same importance as it has the past several years, but in our LCAP when that was developed, parents really spoke loud and clear that SEL was very important, so it rose to the top when that plan was developed, and it’s been growing from there.”

Price recently helped provide training for teachers on trauma awareness and responding to trauma in students.

“I want to be able to have more people recognize when a student is in need,” Serratos emphasized. “Sometimes that’s not always noticeable, there are always signs, and sometimes we miss them. I want more people to know about the signs and catch things early on to provide prevention help earlier on than when there is a crisis.”

“I always want to see more SEL learning and more counseling available,” Price said. “Kids need that safety. They need to feel secure before they are in a position where they can really be learning. As a counselor, I’m always going to advocate for that. I would love to see what the results will be as teachers really embrace the SEL curriculum.”