Just what is the Co-op?

The idea behind the Co-op is to create a clearinghouse that will distribute the most current work products developed by Guidance Counselors with the intent to enhance our effectiveness. By sharing our best products, those created and tested in schools across the Country I believe we can raise the level of our game and at the same time be more on point with student, parent and community needs. We all spend considerable time researching and creating lesson plans, PowerPoint’s and classroom presentations to get our curriculum in front of students and work products that make it easier to do our job. It is my hope that this effort will reduce the amount of time spent creating these products and will buy us more time to work directly with students.

Few of us have the time to sit and create all the work products we need but by pooling our resources we can each became more powerful in our guidance delivery and ultimately the students we serve will be better for it. That is the goal of the Scoll Counselor Co-op, creating an incredible resource that is constantly updated and provided in a medium that allows you to change, add and delete to fit your circumstances. This is not a one time shot but a living, evolving body of work that will grow and change as our profession does.

In this initial offering you will find hundreds of pages of documents and handouts provided on a CD so you can simply add your schools logo and your name and use or change as you like without having to start from scratch. There will be documents that you already have that might provide you with a fresh perspective or new angle. It will include items as simple as a fax page (I have been at schools that used a hand written one) to a 50 page guide for College Bound students. There are work products like credit evaluations to classroom presentations for each grade level.  We have a number of letters to parents covering all situations.  I’m sure many of you have developed work documents that we do not offer or would be a great supplement to what we have, I urge you to consider sharing your best work to the cooperative.

I will post much more information in the near future but ask that if you have questions or just want to talk about anything related to School Counseling please email me at counselorcoop@yahoo.com or call toll free 1-888-602-5894. Thanks, I look forward to hearing from you as we continue to develop this resource together.

Ed Hiestand