PhotoVoice--The Final Product

You may remember back a month or so when I wrote a post called PhotoVoice Project...Well, I presented some of my photos today via the following YouTube video:

The photo narrative is meant to help me understand how I see the world and leadership through the camera lens.  The difficult part of the presentation process is that each photo has its own story and meaning to me but the viewer may just be like, "Cool, a picture of a bus..."  So, take it with a grain of salt.  Short post but thought I would share...

Counseling Conference Confessions: Intern's First Time

Last Friday, the Maryland School Counselor Association held it's spring state conference in Greenbelt, Maryland.  I was lucky enough to get a graduate volunteer spot for the day.  I met other graduate students, school counselors from around the state, district officials and other individuals with vested interests in the school counseling field throughout the day.  I even met some of my blogging/Twitter inspirations, in the flesh.

I ran into some traffic on the hour-long drive from Baltimore... hey, it is Maryland, it seems like any amount of rain can seriously stop traffic.  Once I got to the conference center, I met the other graduate volunteers. I was excited to meet my fellow graduate students because we all came from different universities (University of Maryland and McDaniel College).  It was exciting to meet each other and learn about the similarities and differences amongst our programs.  We shared internship/practicum stories as well as job-seeking strategies.  Nothing fires me up more than being surrounded by driven, transformed counselors in training.

Graduate student volunteers- University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins and McDaniel College all represented.

We started our day by registering conference participants and handing out the necessary materials.  After, we attended a resource fair where I talked to venders/education professionals about the ASVAB and ASCA... and I got some swag--new Post-Its, anyone?!  During breakfast, we heard from Dr. Sylinda Gilchrist Banks, the Chair of the Board of Directors for the American School Counselor Association.  She presented about the importance of mattering for young people- a topic that I just presented on in my internship class last week.  It was great to hammer home the need for strong, congruent relationships.

After the breakfast session, we graduate volunteers each went to individual presentation rooms where we introduced speakers, signed-off on CEUs, and collected evaluations.  While working in the "Yellow Room," I learned about college/career counseling in middle schools, integrated counseling technology resources, and the importance of articulating the counselor's role in academic achievement.  In addition to the awesome info and swag- I met many school working school counselors who shared their wisdom and perspective.

New planner and some business cards.

I walked away with new insights, a new planner (pictured above), new mentors and a long list of emails to send!  I look forward to continuing my involvement in professional organizations as I grow in my counseling career.  If you want to learn more about the Maryland School Counselor Association (or see some photos from the conference) check out their Facebook page here.

Alex Trabek, I am not.

Every week, I get to enter an SAT prep class to teach a lesson about college searching, financial aid, career orientation, etc.  While it is awesome to get into the class and teach, sometimes I don't know how effective my interventions are.  Here comes the data and assessment!  I have used surveys to measure the students' perceived comfort on various topics.  We've had open conversations about what other topics they want to cover.  They presented college profiles to their classmates to show their own understanding while teaching and exposing each other to new college options.  Today, I wanted to make the assessment process a little more fun.

I created a simple "Jeopardy"-style game to bolster some friendly competition amongst the students.  Though I didn't capture specific data on the topics addressed within the game, the students' excitement, answers, and engagement told me that they have developed an understanding for the topics we've covered.  (whoa, that was a wordy sentence...)  Regardless, I thought this was a cool way to measure their understanding of key concepts regarding college and financial aid.  Though this group focuses specifically on college-going/access, I can imagine using a Jeopardy-style lesson to measure understanding regarding bullying, financial aid, high school requirements, etc in the future.

What to test your knowledge about the SAT, financial aid, and college seeking (and a hint of Mr. H trivia)?  Follow the link here.