The little things

We've all had those days where nothing seems to go right and we feel like a failure.  There's always that time that you think "i'm the worst counselor ever!"  There are so many things that happen in the day to day that we were never prepared for in graduate school.  We are looked upon to make in-the-minute decisions and sometimes we make the wrong one.  Students confide in us and tell us secrets that we must tuck aways inside ourselves.  Parents take out their anger on us or don't understand.  Many school counselors (especially in elementary schools) are lone rangers.  We develop our programs, we implement our school wide programs, we make our own schedules (only to have a crisis come up and throw it out the window), we plan and conduct our own small groups and classroom guidance lessons, and then we alone go home and keep it bottled up.  I've already written a blog post on the importance of self care, but I forgot to mention one of the most important things:  the reason we do this job--for the kids.  One afternoon, I was walking down the hallway when another teacher stopped me.  She said "I have to put a copy of something in your mailbox.  We did a lesson in 2nd grade where we read a story about a bully and then had to write about it.  One student wrote about you."  My heart jumped for joy!  Here's a time when a student was able to identify the role of the counselor, when I wasn't even involved in the lesson!  I hadn't even seen that kid that day!  I knew in that moment that I am making an impact, and kids DO KNOW what I do and who I am and that I am here to help.  Sometimes we don't need a big recognition (although I felt so loved during National School Counseling Week), it's the little things that matter the most.