A Welcome Mat That Leaves a Lasting Impression

Happy new school year, everybody. I hope the summer of 2023 was absolutely spectacular for you. A colleague recently came to me for ideas and asked, “How do you welcome students? What structures have you put in place to help students feel comfortable?”

What is the significance of providing a “welcoming environment?” What does it look like to set a “welcome mat?” Setting a “welcome mat” atmosphere need not be too time consuming or cumbersome for school counselors – this can be a school-wide effort with the bulk of the work done by students. Here are a few initiatives that the Gage Park Counseling Department and administration have put in place.

Welcoming Buddies
Starting school can be stressful and somewhat emotionally traumatic, but peer support goes a long way to ease the stress and the fears of not fitting in, and builds great relationships. You can get creative with naming a group or committee of students whom you have vetted and selected to be peer mentors to new students. Whether an incoming freshman or a transfer student, fully acclimating into a new school climate is not easy. Established welcoming buddies can help newcomers navigate through your school, helping to build a sense of community and belonging. This program can be useful at any grade level, pre-K through high school.

In my school counseling experience of putting together a Welcoming Buddy system, one essential step is vetting for both the peer mentors and the new students. I also used weekly check-in logs to maintain a cadence of meeting times between newcomers and their Welcome Buddy. The third tool – the most useful in this program – was garnering feedback. This gave me an opportunity to see the highs, the lows and possible changes to make the program better. I have seen more than 60 students have an amazing transition experience into high school in my career so far. Some of the newcomers volunteered in later years to become Welcome Buddies because of the experience they had.

Freshmen Connection
For many years, the Chicago Public School District has offered the Freshmen Connection program to continue the matriculation process for students transitioning from elementary/middle school to high school. In this summer program, students engage in enrichment for reading and math and have school counseling lessons covering all three domains. This program, in my opinion, has brought great success among freshmen students. I tell people all the time that there is magic in Freshmen Connection. More than 99 percent of the students I have worked with who participated in Freshmen Connection graduated with well above a 2.00 grade point average, did not fail classes and graduated with their entering cohort.

Freshmen Connection works with students to get prepared for high school. School counselors in this program provide lessons on conflict resolution, self-advocacy and college/career exploration, to name a few. The program gives incoming freshmen a chance to connect with older peers who serve as youth leaders and to work with some of the school staff who will teach their classes. I have coordinated scavenger hunts, movie showings with snacks, and team-building field trips. These students got to know each other which helps them stay connected later on. This summer, the students who participated in Freshmen Connection have agreed to form a new group, Freshmen Ambassadors, who will help welcome new freshmen at the beginning of school.

#bekind21
Two years ago, Gage Park High School pledged to participate in #bekind21 week. Introduced by the Born This Way Foundation, formed by Lady Gaga, it runs September 1–21 and focuses on building kinder, connected communities promoting mental wellness. In this campaign, schools can choose from a list of activities to implement school wide. One of my favorite activities is “Introduce yourself to a classmate or schoolmate you have not met.” Why is this my favorite? It is because we wear name tags with smiley face stickers and are intentional in connecting with someone we have not formally met. It is also an opportunity to meet students who have transferred and enrolled after the first week of school. Two years ago during this campaign, Lady Gaga herself retweeted one of my tweets from this project, and today that has been shared well over a thousand times.

I am seeing the sweet fruits of tremendous work in creating a welcoming environment. There is definitely power in setting the atmosphere for students to feel welcomed and included. This is something that we school counselors can do and, with the help of students, it can become an enlightening experience on both ends. Setting a positive, affirming tone works wonders for students in their pursuit of academic success. I encourage you to think of ways that you can lay out that welcome mat that students will talk about years later.

Contact Andrea Allen-Moore, an ISCA Board member and a school counselor at Gage Park High School in Chicago, at andrea.allenmoore@gmail.com.