President’s Letter: Creatively Yours

As school counselors, we are challenged to be creative despite our limitations or lack of resources. It’s been a whole year now since GASC has become an affiliate of ASCA. I welcome all our new and old members with ideas for school counseling in the elementary, middle, high school and postsecondary levels. Allow me to use the acronym CREATIVELY YOURS.

C - Connecting with our students in the school system inspires us to know that our students are human beings and that we are tasked to build better humans.
R - Remembering our strengths and limitations as we practice school counseling grounds us to the fact that we cannot share what we don’t have. We owe it to our students to help them remember their positivity so that their negativity will be relieved or managed well.
E - Empowering ourselves to nourish creativity by finding space that gets our thoughts and energy flowing. It’s easy to take our environment or school for granted and choose to be in autopilot mode. Yet our school environment is an important influence on our creativity. New feelings, ideas and insights into the people we meet may enhance our creativity and teach us new or creative ways to do school counseling.
A - Affirmation of our inner talents and treasures to deal with difficult situations in the counseling process is a big factor in allowing our creative juices to flow smoothly.
T - Taste means asking ourselves how our diet can increase our energy and alertness in school counseling. We need to take care of our sense of taste as we are challenged to model healthy food and a healthy lifestyle for our students.
I - Impact and influence awareness. Our psychological work space can impact or influence how we can be creative in counseling our students. When we feel safe and accepted in our school counseling process, creative spirit is nourished.
V - Venturing beyond our comfort zones allows us to develop our creativity as school counselors. Taking the risk to attend ASCA19 let me explore possibilities outside my geographic comfort zone. Attending off-island professional development challenges us to be creative and think of new ways to do school counseling. Travel for learning is one of the greatest teachers. I am grateful that Patty Terlaje, GASC executive vice president and president-elect, and I travelled to attend ASCA19 in Boston, Mass. We learned a lot and are excited to share our learnings.
E - Expanding awareness of our capacity to sing, dance, compose a poem, draw, sketch without judgement and allow our inner child to be healed  in the process will help us know that every student may need our creativity to help them succeed in their life as a student and beyond.
L - Listening creatively allows us to give unconditional positive support and help each student be the best version of themselves. Loving our students by listening without judgement is creatively healing them.
Y - Your creative soul has ideas to help others in the process of school counseling. Being in touch with our creative soul/spirit can be difficult, but this is the core of creativity in life, love and our journey – personal or professional. Spirituality and creativity are deeply connected. Spirituality allows us to feel comfort and at peace while creativity allows us to express wo we are as school counselors and be inspired to work beyond our capacities to build better humans.
 
Y - Young people we encounter on the school counseling journey trust school counselors to help develop their minds and hearts. Coloring projects, drawing or sketching gives our young students a chance to express their journey.
O - Owning our capacity to create music or art is a powerful way to nourish our creativity. We can then extend this inspiration to our students as we help them become the best version of themselves.
U - Understanding where our students are coming from and allowing them to express themselves creatively in small groups or in classroom lessons inspires them to be courageous to share and heal.
R - Relaxation exercise through mindful meditation and yoga definitely helps our students become aware of their creative possibilities.
S - Synchronicity and serendipity. According to Jordan Ayan, “Synchronicity refers to those times when you are looking for an idea or answer, and you unexpectedly experience an event or a string of events that perfectly solves your problem, and serendipity refers to accidents and random coincidences that trigger an idea or concept when you are not looking.” These two concepts allow school counselors to be inspired to create innovative ways to sustain our profession and our organization, whether it be GASC or ASCA. Nothing happens by chance.

Happy creative school counseling, dear Guam school counselors! Welcome to a new school year 2019-2020!
 
Contact Estela L. Calata, GASC president, at elcalata@yahoo.com.