School for School Counselors Podcast

School counseling on paper and school counseling in real life are not the same job.

You were trained to support students, build relationships, and run a comprehensive program. Then you walked onto a campus with an impossible caseload, unclear expectations, constant interruptions, and demands coming from every direction. So you did what good school counselors do: you worked harder.

But what if effort was never the missing piece?

In thi...

The educational system doesn't need to plot to keep you quiet.

It just needs to keep you tired.

And after that, the silence takes care of itself.

A few nights ago, I watched over a hundred school counselors simultaneously go quiet.

It was weird.

They'd been engaged in my presentation. They were animated and alive. The conversation was popping. 

But then... I changed the subject from talking about the problems to talking about what t...

Most school counselors plan their programs in the same order they were taught: start with the data, identify the need, choose the intervention, and try to make the model fit.

But that's exactly why so many carefully built plans fall apart by October.

In this episode, Steph explains why school counselors may be planning their programs backwards — and the two questions that should come before goals, calendars, initiatives, or act...

Most school counselors can describe what they do all day.

Crisis response. Small groups. Student check-ins. Parent calls. Schedule changes. Behavior support. Data meetings. The fifty small things that happen before 9:00 a.m.

But ask a school counselor what makes them remarkable, and things can get quiet fast.

In this episode, Steph talks about why it can be so hard to name the specific instincts, patterns, and abilities that make you ...

Last week, we looked at what happens when schools finally put a price tag on the mental health fallout of social media.

This week, we're looking at the strange second half of that story.

If technology is part of the problem... why are some schools turning to even more technology as the solution?

Across the country, districts are adopting AI-powered mental health tools that monitor students, flag concerning behavior, and even carry on ...

Social media drama has a price tag now.

A Kentucky school district recently settled a lawsuit against social media companies for approximately $27 million, arguing that the platforms helped create a student mental health burden schools have been forced to absorb.

But school counselors didn’t need a lawsuit to know this was costing something.

The screenshots.
The group chats.
The parent emails.
The cyberbullying investig...

I don’t buy printable counseling resources anymore.

Haven’t for years.

But to test a theory on the air, I broke that rule. I bought a popular, well-reviewed anxiety resource from one of the big teacher marketplaces and ran my paper test on it live.

I expected to find junk.

I didn’t.

It was polished. Thoughtful. Well-organized. It even cited real research.

And that’s what made the problem harder to ignore.

In this e...

If somebody else could do exactly what you're doing after reading the same slide deck-

Why did you go to grad school? 

That's the question that hit me after I reviewed a state-sponsored training that handed school counselors a watered-down counseling model and called it evidence-based. 

And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. 

But this episode isn't really about one training. 

It's about what happens when a p...

On the last day of school, the district sent an email about spreadsheets.

But not one person asked what you needed to do your job better next year.

Not what you were seeing.
Not what students needed.
Not what kept support from reaching kids faster.

Just the spreadsheet.

There’s a name for that kind of silence.

This episode is about why nobody asks school counselors what they’re observing… and what it costs all c...

A school administrator once told me the reason I couldn't finish a single classroom lesson was because the kids just liked me too much.

She meant it as a compliment.  It took me years to understand what it actually revealed.

This episode is about the gap between the job we were trained to do and the job we're actually allowed to do. How that gap gets handed to counselors as personal failure. And what happens to a profession- and...

Most school counselors think the new school year starts in August.

I don’t think it does.

I think a huge part of your August gets decided right now… in May… while you’re mentally saturated, emotionally exhausted, and trying to crawl to the finish line.

Because the things you leave unresolved this time of year have a way of following you right back into the building.

The role conversation you keep avoiding.
...

You’re about to get a referral that says:

“It’s been happening all year.”

And somehow… now it’s urgent.

This episode is about why that happens, and why treating May referrals like October problems will burn you out fast.

Because most of what’s hitting your desk right now isn’t new.

It’s late.

We’re talking about:

•  The predictable end-of-year referral surge (and what&rsq...

You’re doing meaningful work.
You’re supporting students.
You’re handling things no one else on campus is equipped to handle.

But somehow, when big decisions get made, it’s like none of that exists.

This episode looks at why that happens... and why it keeps happening.

The school counseling profession has made its impact almost impossible to see.

So in this episode, we’re talking about the visibility ...

You know the feeling.

The one that says:

• If you were better at this, it wouldn't be this hard. 
• If you had advocated more effectively, the caseload would be manageable. 
• If you were really cut out for this work, you wouldn't be sitting in your car wondering if you can walk through the doors.

That feeling has a name. And it isn't burnout.

In this episode, Steph Johnson makes the case- through peer-reviewed research and ...

You’re not overwhelmed because there’s too much work;

You’re overwhelmed because too much of it is not your job.

You're not saying yes because you "lack boundaries".
You're saying yes because, in that moment, saying yes made sense.

And that’s the problem.

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Join our new Skool for School Counselors community 

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Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’...

You sat in the circle.
You heard the apology.
And you knew… nothing actually changed.

Restorative justice can work in schools- the research supports that.

But the versions most campuses are implementing...

Are something else entirely.

Research describes restorative practices as structured, resourced, and time-intensive.

What most schools are doing is faster, lighter, and handed off.

That's how school counselors end up in the...

There’s a reason the same explanation keeps showing up in every staff meeting, every training, every conversation about struggling students.

It feels good.

Problem is- It wasn’t built on evidence.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs became one of the most widely accepted frameworks in education without ever being meaningfully tested the way we use it. 

In this episode, we go back to where the pyramid actually came from, ...

At some point, someone has probably told you to “find your why.”

I gave that advice last week.

I wish I hadn't.

In this episode, I’m getting more personal than I ever have on this podcast.

I’m sharing what one of the hardest years of my career has done to me physically…

what happened when I defaulted to the weakest advice I could have given…

and what the research actually says school counselors shoul...

You said yes… then suddenly it was your job.

At some point in your career, something changed.

You stopped being the person students came to see and started being the person students got sent to.

Behavior referrals. Classroom removals. Crisis containment. The emotional labor nobody else knew how to handle.

And it happened one "yes" at a time.

In this episode, I'm taking a hard look at how school counselors slowly became the system...