Making a Difference in the Lives of Students (GSCA 2023 Annual Conference)

Secondary

Appropriate for All Counselors

Tips and Technology

Federal Student Aid has been working to ‘simplify’ the FAFSA for the past several years.  The 2024-25 FAFSA having the most changes.  This session will walk through the FAFSA changes, discuss how the changes will impact FAFSA completion events, students financial aid, as well as the post-secondary’s award process.  Real student scenarios will be used as examples for the new FAFSA.

Counselor Educator/Supervisor

Appropriate for All Counselors

Student Focused

Did you know the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is NOT a military test and assists with College Readiness? The ASVAB Career Exploration Program (CEP) allows students to explore multiple paths to success -- college, certification, apprenticeships, Military, etc. in one place. Receive an overview on the complete ASVAB and career exploration program to nullify preconceived myths surrounding this planning tool. Session informs educators who advise or influence students’ post-high school graduation plans.

Secondary

Appropriate for All Counselors

Advocacy

This session focuses on a comprehensive advocacy approach, which, like the starfish, has five "arms" (stakeholder groups) that impact students' lives.  Participants will learn advocacy strategies for addressing students' needs at the building, community, district, state, and national levels.   

Secondary

Appropriate for All Counselors

Student Focused

Engaging instructional strategies are essential for school counselors who want to deliver interactive and meaningful lessons to their students. In this workshop, participants will learn how to identify, select, adapt, implement, and evaluate engaging instructional strategies that operationalize the ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors for Student Success. This workshop will provide participants with a toolkit of engaging instructional strategies that they can use in their lessons to enhance student learning and engagement.

Middle

Appropriate for All Counselors

Counselor Focused

"Exploring Effective Play Therapy is a counseling workshop designed to bring awareness to the Theoretical Model of Play Therapy. Counselors will have the opportunity to examine the use of play therapy and its benefits in helping students impacted by trauma or psychological issues express their feelings easily through play as an alternative to traditional talk therapies.

Elementary

Appropriate for All Counselors

Counselor Focused

Is there a need for mental health services in your school? Have clinical mental health counselors been introduced in your building yet seem detached from you and your environment?  Join this interactive session as we explore how school counselors and community mental health counselors can collaborate to contribute to student success in the school environment. Build a toolkit through a case scenario that identifies the roles, interventions, and strategies necessary to sustain this growing partnership. 

Secondary

Appropriate for All Counselors

Advocacy

Learn about our experience working to increase access and achievement in AP, IB, and dual enrollment courses for students of color at a diverse Atlanta-area high school, and how our program has expanded to include feeder schools within the cluster. We will discuss the various interventions we used to begin the diversification process, including small groups, individual counseling, bilingual parent nights, administrator consultation, and more. Come learn and share your ideas!

Middle

Intermediate Counselors (5-10 years)

Student Focused

Self-injury is a common, destructive, and alarming behavior among adolescents.  Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy provides techniques that allow counselors to address this phenomenon in a safe and clinically supportive manner.  Understanding the psychology of self-injury and basic (DBT) strategies can help school counselors differentiate self-injury from suicidal ideation, address self-injury in a supportive and direct manner, and help prevent future self injury in students.

Elementary

Appropriate for All Counselors

Student Focused

Restorative Practices is a relationship-focused approach that maximizes student motivation and learning, repairs harm, and restores relationships.  Student and staff lives can be changed inside the school environment and outside.

Have you ever wanted to bring sustainable positive change when problem solving with others? Students or your own families? Then learning and implementing restorative practices is a mindset and approach that will bring that positive change to your life and the lives of others.

Secondary

Beginner Counselors (1-4 years)

Student Focused

Learn about how your girls can start to RULE their EXPERIENCES. Ruling our experiences is an organization that helps cultivate and mold young girls of BIPOC to rule their experiences. 

Secondary

Appropriate for All Counselors

Tips and Technology

Are you having trouble tracking all the tasks you do daily? Are you tracking them, but must create your own separate graphs?  GaDOE has made it possible for all school counselors to track their time and advocate for their comprehensive programs by purchasing SCUTA. This program is a game changer in allowing counselor s to track their time and allowing their work to speak for itself. 

Nearing Retirement/Retired

Appropriate for All Counselors

Counselor Focused

Have you thought about obtaining your license to become a Licensed Professional Counselor in GA? There is a high demand for counseling services for children and adolescents, and school counselors are uniquely qualified to help meet this need. This session will discuss the process to become an LPC and open a private practice. The benefits of clinical supervision while adding a “side job”  will be discussed along with transitioning to private practice after retirement.

Elementary

Intermediate Counselors (5-10 years)

Student Focused

Looking for ways to increase engagement within your small group counseling sessions? You will leave this session with ready-to-use resources to integrate grade appropriate STE(A)M into small groups. Scholars will have a chance to preview or review vocabulary while practicing skills from their academic setting to build social/emotional competencies.  Best of all, this visual and kinesthetic approach will help students remember what they learned so they can apply it later.

Counselor Educator/Supervisor

Appropriate for All Counselors

General Counseling

While most families agree that college is an investment in their student’s future, many are confused and stressed about paying for that education. Join this session to explore what college-bound high school families know and expect about paying for college, and how that compares to the realities experienced by currently enrolled undergraduates. We will investigate how families’ understanding of available funding sources, attitudes and behaviors change as families begin and follow their higher education journey.  

Counselor Educator/Supervisor

Beginner Counselors (1-4 years)

Advocacy

We receive messages of stereotypes and assumptions at an early age. This session will focus on what those early messages are and where they come from. Participants will have an opportunity to identify experiences that have consciously and unconsciously shaped their identities, assumptions about others and people in their world view. Particpants will also reflect on how we can unlearn those messages in order to reduce the impact of bias on our students and communities.