President's Letter: Students on Your Team

Now more than ever, we must advocate for social/emotional learning in our schools. I am the school counselor of the Health and Human Services Academy at Jonesboro High School, and I recently had the pleasure to sit in on an interview panel for my academy’s high school ambassadors. I was pleasantly surprised to hear so many students say, “more mental health awareness” when asked what they thought our students needed right now. All I could do was smile under my mask and nod my head in agreement when they spoke about how “quarantine was hard” and how they really worried about some of their friends that weren’t as mentally tough as they felt they were. It is encouraging to hear students empathize with their fellow peers, and we all have students at our schools who want to help if we just listen and allow them to make things happen. Being a part of the interview panel really put some things into perspective for me as their school counselor and the “Human Services” piece of our academy. These students have excellent ideas for school wide and community events that involve everyone, and I look forward to the partnerships that will be formed with school and community stakeholders. Several of the ambassadors mentioned a partnership with mental health agencies, and I loved when one of them said, “I just want us to spread positivity to everybody.”

Speaking of mental health agencies, I am thankful to work in a school district with mental health counselors at our high school, and I’m even more thankful that we make a great team. The school counselors, administrators and mental health counselors have a Family Services meeting every two weeks to collaborate about student updates and interventions. Our meetings are not only about students who receive mental health services, but any student who needs our extra attention. Working in a large district, this gives me an opportunity to learn more about students from the other two academies, and ideas of mentorships for at-risk students come to mind when discussing these students. This is where we need to utilize the students who want to be a part of positive change. Nothing is more powerful than a sense of belonging, and sometimes that’s all our students need to motivate them to make better choices.

Our teachers and staff need some extra love and support right now as well. Sometimes we just need to stop and reflect on what’s going well instead of dwelling on the negative. As school counselors, let’s do our part to be kind, encouraging, and find the positives.

Contact Laquietta Stewart, ArSCA president, at laquietta.stewart@jonesboroschools.net.