“The Role of School Counselors in Youth Substance Use Prevention and Support”

[00:00:08] Jake White: It’s time for part two. Welcome back to the Party Talk podcast, where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. We’re back with Joel. And we’re continuing the conversation. And if you remember where we left off, we’re about to learn if school counselors were a thing, or where it came from. And I did not expect Joel to know this.  And so maybe there’ll be a time in the future where that’s everywhere. And I’m wondering how school counselors been around for, like, 100 years, or is this new? 

[00:00:45] Joel Rathmann: You bringing me back to the days when I had taken history classes in the school. So the school counselor didn’t really take place until the early 1900s. And at the time, it wasn’t even guidance counselors, called vocational counselor. And their sole job was to find students jobs. So you would go to their office, and they would say, what do you want to be? I want to be a metal worker, okay, metal worker, it was just very not personal, they were just really trying to fill the void for missing jobs. And it came about during the great wars, because they were trying to fill the spots that the men all left for battle, they’re trying to fill those spots. And then it was also government driven too and it’s always government driven. But in the 50s, it was really government driven, they were trying to be more competitive in the global market. So then they were pushing for stem fields, because they wanted to get to the moon faster, or, the arms race during the Cold War, and just all this stuff, assault, there’s global stuff that gets in the way or Gears counselors. And it wasn’t until around the 80s and 90s. So pretty recently, that social emotional stuff started coming into the schools because they realized, holy crap, we need more than just like career counselors, like these kids probably need some help, because they noticed that numbers are ticking up with mental health. And so then they started training counselors to be pseudo trained and social emotional, because I’m not a licensed therapist, I always tell my students, that if they need to have one on one counseling, then I refer them out or I offer them that option. The turning point was the 80s and 90s, when it became guidance counselor, and then it was like, not so much SEL, but it was pushing a little bit more towards it. And then it wasn’t until the 2000. So when it was like, Okay, we need to have social emotional on there too. And that’s when they asked a model developed the three domains of academic career, or academics, college and career and social emotional. So those are the three domains of focus as a school counselor, American School Counseling Association that they really pinpoint on. 

[00:03:38] Jake White: I did not expect you to know that. I might have butchered the heck out of it. That’s what I remember. 

[00:03:51] Joel Rathmann: I tell students, you don’t have to remember everything. Give a general, like it’s okay to be wrong and be corrected. I’m sure people will go “Wow”.

[00:04:02] Jake White: That’s amazing. Even if you just made that whole thing up, that’s impressive. But it makes sense that you enjoy learning too so that you probably maybe retain this information, you’re, going to use it and you like learning. So I’m getting an insight into your brain right now of like, that class, that history class, you can still remember some of the stuff that you learned even if the dates are a little off or whatever, that’s super interesting. And I’m curious too, because knowing your school and you mentioned the three areas. They were like what? It was the job?

[00:04:42] Joel Rathmann:  So academics, college career and social emotional.

[00:04:49] Jake White: So, for this case, I would say drug prevention very much falls into the social emotional learning. I got two questions for you, first one is as you mentioned, students coming into your office or you’re around to ask them about drug use, if you do smell something, or just to ask them how they’re doing, and they will share, well, I use this, I smoke weed to deal with this. And you listen, you might offer some ideas as to how they cope, deal with things. And which is interesting for our listeners, over 70% of students who use drugs. 70% say stress is one of the top factors. So this is just something we can expect for students these days, they’re stressed, they’re online, they are stressed socially, because they’re just always available. And they could be ridiculed. They could be looked at. They’re connected. And they can be stressed because of the way to family, having jobs, taken care of. And even if their family isn’t around, that’s the stress too, not having the role models around. So there’s so many reasons, I just like to say this, students are stressed, and that’s okay. It’s not that they are paying the bills, and they’re raising a family, that’s the only thing that stresses people out, there are plenty of things. And when you have a young mind, your frontal lobe isn’t fully developed. You can’t deal with stress in the same way. Or things will stress you out that might not stress an adult out. So just understanding that, I’m curious, do you see in your role at your school, is prevention in your role? Are you doing that kind of work? Or is it pretty much the one on ones in your office?

[00:06:39] Joel Rathmann: It’s typically the one on ones in my office, we don’t have a set curriculum, more plan, it’s usually individualized basis, just because it’s not a major concern within our school. As I mentioned earlier, the major concern within our building is keeping kids at school and not going to work and not prioritizing that over their education. So then the drugs are more of a side effect within my building. So that’s why it’s one on one. We haven’t hit a threshold because we have like monthly meetings with the social support staff and school support staff. So social workers, we meet once a month and we talk about data and what’s going on. And drugs have never really come up as an issue. We mentioned as a side effect of this, we have a lot of trauma kids, we have a lot of kids that have rough family lives, or maybe their living situation isn’t the grace. They’re homeless. But we try to provide resources and services for our students as much as we can. So it doesn’t get to a point where they rely on drugs to warp their reality and make it more tolerable. 

[00:08:05] Jake White: Yes. And that’s well said, too, is that the drug use is a side effect, or it’s something that happens because of something else. There’s a root of the problem that needs to be met. And that’s good to remember. I work with some schools who think, as a speaker, and some one with the curriculum, that I could come in for one day on all these issues, it’s like, no, I can do some education, I can share with them something in a really fun way that gets them to listen, probably to the same things you’ve been telling them. But it’s a new person with a different story, a unique way to say it, that gets them talking. And now they’re going into the counselor’s office to have that conversation for the first time maybe, or challenge themselves to find new coping mechanisms, because the root of the problem is, like you said, those other things of the stress, maybe homelessness and things like that would make someone want to escape. So that’s good. Thank you for sharing that with me. That brings me to the next part, is what does social emotional learning look like for you? Are you doing any thing that you’re proud of, or things that are out of the box or just other counselors that might be listening could steal from you or anything like that? 

[00:09:21] Joel Rathmann: So I have to thank our school for doing restorative practices within our building. And I am a firm believer in restorative practices, because I’ve seen the effects with that our students, they will request circles, if you’re familiar with restorative practices at all. 

[00:09:40] Jake White: I know restorative practices, but I don’t know its circles. 

[00:09:43] Joel Rathmann: Okay. So within a circle, it’s an approach to conflict their problem. So what you’ll have is say, Student A, said something mean to Student B and Student B decided to throw Water bottle at student A. So you can do it in a way, we give our students this option, is whether they can choose, okay, you can have a circle, or because you have that right as a student, or you can go straight to admin, and they can handle it. And most of the time students are like, I’m going to do a circle, because within a circle, you have a mediator. So I’ll set as a mediator. And then you have student A and Student B, come into a room and they have a talking piece. And there’s four steps to the circle, each student gets to talk about objectively what happened, like what time of day was it? Where was it? And what objectively happened? No emotion, no, nothing at first. And then second step is you talk about how it affected other people. So your conflict. How did it affect the building? How did it affect the classroom? How did it affect the students sitting next to you. And then last, or the third step, you talk about how it affected you personally, so that we don’t leave that part out. And then the fourth step is compromise. So you come up with an agreed compromise or steps moving forward. And we tell students when we’re teaching them because we actually have a class and that’s we tell them that we’re not expecting you to come out hand in hands going down the hallway, Kumbaya, we’re just expecting you to come to a point where you’re like, “Okay, we can agree to disagree, or you can be like we’re cool kind of thing. And more often than not students really work well.” So I have to thank my staff for that. And then now what’s already built into building, me personally, with social emotional learning. I am a firm believer with teenagers because I see it too far often, where in buildings, it’s really easy for to just yell, for example, if a kid’s late to class, and I have fellow staff members that do this, unfortunately, but they’ll just be like, get to class and they’ll be like your are late, what are you doing? Nobody wants to hear that. So I’m really a firm believer in talking to kids in a calm tone, and treating them not like kids, but like young adults, where I’m like, you know what you’re doing. Like, yes, your frontal lobe is developing. I could say that all day, but they have this mentality of like, I’m an adult already, I know what I’m doing with my life. And I’m like, Okay, then let’s treat you like an adult and let’s give you steps and give you the information and a consultation. And at least with that, what I found what successes is by doing that, then students are like, snap, no, I’m not an adult. I’m not ready for this. And, then I’m like, “That’s okay. Because you are a kid. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong, you don’t need to grow up so fast. It’s okay to learn from your mistakes. It’s okay to mess up. It’s okay to do that stuff. I wish someone would have told me that because I had many embarrassing moments as a teenager,” but I guess the inner teenage me wanted an adult’s just be like, it’s okay. You did nothing wrong. You did something stupid. What did you learn from it? And that’s what I do with kids. So I pick and choose battles. If I’m really steadfast, I want them to do something, I’ll be a little bit pushier. But for most stuff, I’m probably going to be crucified for this. But I also want them to fail a little bit. Because I want them to learn, know what that feels like. And then just learn from that and move forward and become stronger because of that. And I don’t do that with major stuff in their lives. But just with little stuff like that. So in my respect at the building level, the restorative practices is awesome, that really is built in curriculum, the climates and students really learn social emotional learning through that, on an individual basis I am really in the firm beliefs of a talk treating them like I would any other adults or just a human, quite frankly, and just calmly talking to them. I don’t think it’s necessary to yell. I grew up in a household where my father would yell occasionally to get his point across and that just was very unhealthy in my eyes, but that’s just me personally. For some people, they need to get that out. But I just approach Students in that way at a calm, respectful, I’ll treat them like an adult. And then if they come to the realization of Holy crap, I’m a teenager, then that’s fine. I’m here for you, that’s why I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to support you. 

[00:15:21] Jake White: I think students notice that too. Because they see the way that you act and you’re calming, you’re in control. When you’re yelling, you’re not in control, your emotions are heightened. Maybe you’re aggravated, it shows that something got the better of you, their behavior got the better of you, you’re stressed out with schoolwork, whatever, they got the better of you. But when you come in a calm matter, it makes people feel safe. This person knows something I don’t, I could probably ask them for help. They’re always calm and collected, I can go to them. And so it makes sense that it’s really cool. I’m glad that you’re a school counselor. Versus like the person, can you imagine like a high strung drama fiend, being a school counselor, they went for all the wrong reasons, and perpetuate an insane school culture. Whereas, which is funny, even just saying that out loud. If you had a different school counselor, and you’ll get involved in all the drama, check that you’re in the right profession, because kids need that safe place to go. Even if they are the drama person of the school, they’re going to learn from you. And they’re going to remember that person who was always calm and collected, and you make an impact on them. And, I think showing them the respect or treating them like an adult is something they might not get at home, they might not get from other teachers. So for you to call them to a high standard, say, Hey, I’m going to treat you like an adult, because you have everything that it takes to act like one. When you know what happened here, and giving them that respect, they’re going to return it too, humans are mirrors. So if you’re yelling at them, that yelling is going to bounce right back at you. That’s, what we do. It’s the same reason why you get sad when you see someone crying, or you smile when you see someone smiling. Yes, humans are connected, that we were designed for community and to be with each other. So all this stuff just goes full circle of how we’re treating people. And it’s cool. You have the social emotional learning piece incorporated into when trouble happens, or conflict happens to along with the curriculum and the different thing that you’re using. Is there anything that you’d like to share that might be helpful just in general for other people, and counselors, principals, other people working with students, and I’ll say that specifically, just anything we can take away from your school that will help with drug prevention, or even like you said, the restorative practice, if students are using any wisdom that you can impart? 

[00:18:18] Joel Rathmann: So on an individual basis, the biggest advice I can share is be okay to mess up in front of kids. Like we were doing the FAFSA, the one of the graduation requirements for our district, just complete the FAFSA. It’s exhausting. It’s a long process, we all remember doing for those that went to college. And for teenagers, I imagine it’s just pulling teeth. So there have been some students who have come in. And there was one scene in particular where the issue was, we finally figured out the reason that wasn’t connecting is because she was on her mom’s account. And she was trying to fill it out for herself. So then, I finally realized that and I’m like, well, you’ve been on your mom’s account this whole time. Maybe, I use my stuff. And that’s embarrassing whatever. I’m like, Mr. Rathmann must look and then she was like, teasing me and she’s like, Mr. Rathmann, was like doing that. And I am like, I know, I’m sorry, you know what, I’m going to compromise. I’m going to type everything for you. So we don’t have to do it all over again. How does that sound? And just like owning up to your mistakes, if you’re like, adults, if kids see that adults make mistakes, I think they relate to you more. And then how you react to those mistakes, too. I’ve messed up. I’ve told kids information and it was wrong. That happened today. I call the kid a name. And he was like, I’m so and so. I don’t know why everyone thinks I look like him. And I’m like, well, that’s embarrassing. I’ll just do that and they’ll be like, forget what I said. All like laugh or do some goofy voice, I think when kids see that you’re playful. And you’re just transparent and honest about messing up. Then kids just respect you more. Which you think it’d be the opposite. Like, you have to know where everything as adults. That’d be one of the big ones. And then another one is as I mentioned earlier, I will mark it restorative practices to the ends of the earth.

[00:20:27] Jake White: What I’m hearing you say like the main theme, which I love is just the vulnerability, that same thing you said that singing requires and getting that yourself out there is useful to you today, as you navigate working with students and calling them to be better to resolve conflict using those restorative practices. And being a role model as you are messing up. And you can show them how you react to it. And that’s the thing, I heard that, behavior is caught, not taught. So they’re going to learn more by watching you than doing what you say. And if anybody here remembers being a kid, you didn’t care about what anybody told you to do. You are more likely to look at them, see what they were like and say, I want to be like that. And then copy that same behavior. So thanks for being so vulnerable here and sharing your story and sharing some tips too on how maybe some people could steal a few tips from you.

[00:21:29] Joel Rathmann: Jake, thank you so much for having me on here. This was awesome. 

[00:21:32] Jake White: Absolutely. Thanks for being here. That wraps it up. Thank you for listening to another episode of Party Talk, where we get to empower leaders in youth drug prevention. Thanks for listening to the whole thing. Hopefully you got enough value out of it, as I did, because I just love talking with that guy. Was super, super fun. And we’ll see you next week for another episode of Party Talk.