You are in the hallway walking from Point A to Point B and a teacher stops you to alert you about a student concern. You listen, acknowledge the problem, and commit to work with the teacher and student to help resolve the problem. You continue to walk and another teacher stops you to discuss a student problem. You respond similarly, and continue walking.
By the time you arrive back at your office, 3 teachers have shared 3 concerns with you, but you only remember 2 of the 3 concerns. You quickly write in your planner or on sticky notes a brief description of the issue, and then rush off to teach a guidance lesson.
How Do We Track Student Needs?
I currently work at a school with a high number of individual student needs. I have the scenario above happen to me on a weekly basis. I truly believe in being preventative in my approach through guidance lessons, but often times I am working with students who are in crisis or acting out in the moment.
A little over a week ago, I decided that I need a way to prioritize and better track students. Although my brain is pretty amazing at multi-tasking, it sometimes fails when managing a caseload of 550 students and over 25 teachers.
Tracking Tool on Google Drive
So I created a simple tracking system on Google drive to help me track my students. This is different from my individual counseling log, and instead helps me to group students by need. I think this tracking system will help me as a I create small groups, target specific needs in our school, and ensure that I am working with priority need students individually.
To create this in Google, simply click Drive --> Create --> Spreadsheet. Or if you're less comfortable with Google, you can create an old-fashioned spreadsheet.
Categories
I chose 5 categories for students:
- Priority Students (Students who recently experienced a crisis - recent death, suicidal ideation, family change, recent disclosure of abuse)
- Social Skills and Friendships (Students with "girl drama" issues, students with Asperger's/Autism, students who have difficulty maintaining positive relationships with others)
- Anger Management (Defiance issues, threatening others, fighting, disrespecting the teacher)
- Motivation (Students not turning in homework, lacking study skills, not making a connection between schoolwork and their future, apathetic attitude)
- Check-In Students (Students who need to be regularly encouraged or need a positive adult relationship in the school to keep on track.)
How to Use this Tool
This spreadsheet is meant to be fluid - as student needs change, so does the spreadsheet. It is meant to be a planning tool. At the beginning of the week, I can sit down with my planner and my Google drive spreadsheet and decide:
- Who do I need to see this week?
- Do I need to create any small groups?
- Are there any students I need to add or remove from my tracking lists?
