This past summer, I went to a conference for school counselors and attended a session about counseling beyond the office/classroom guidance setting. The presenter was very creative and incredibly inspiring! During the session, I had an idea that would involve working with the PE teachers at my school.
I had often talked to one of our former PE staff members who I would run with occasionally about the lack of motivation many students have running the timed mile each quarter. I had half joked/half offered to run with any students who needed some extra encouragement. Even though that staff member is no longer with us, I was fairly certain our current teachers had the same issue and might be open to my idea. My idea was to be able to interact with lots of students at once, in a setting that they weren't used to seeing me in, but still be there to be encouraging and motivate them to do something that was difficult.
The program I came up with is called "Catch the Counselor." Essentially, I challenged all the students in PE to run the timed mile with me and either finish before or with me for each hour. I told each hour I would not be the fastest, but that I would not walk during any of the hours.
Monday was the day and it was so much fun! Each student in every hour that made my time or below signed a banner and we hung it in the gym. I had one class where 26 students got to sign...it was so awesome I was so proud of all of them!
Here is a break down of my times for each of the 7 miles:
1st hour-10:14
2nd hour-9:45
3rd hour-10:00
4th hour-9:45
5th hour-9:40
6th hour-9:30
7th hour-9:36
What a great day! I hope to be able to do this again and find other ways to work with students outside my normal realm of school counseling. I love what I do!!!
