December 2020
Terese Jurgensen - Iowa Department of Education
The Iowa Department of Education salutes and thanks each and every school counselor and educator during this unique and challenging school year. Your resilience and courage is greatly admired and appreciated as you serve students, staff and families in your care.
I am excited to announce that Department will be releasing a new Bullying and Harassment AEA Online Module in January 2021. This is the first release of ongoing work for Iowa schools and communities titled, Bullying/Harassment Prevention and Intervention - Foundations. The module is created for individual 30 - 45 minute sessions and supports Iowa Law 280.28 (4a.) “Provide training on anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies to school employees and volunteers who have significant contact with students.” I will share more on the great people and process that created this module over the past several months in our next newsletter.
Additionally, in efforts to support safe online learning, the Department has released R2L Cyberbullying Prevention training for educators and school counselors. The information gives some great ideas, videos, teaching tools and prevention strategies that can be used immediately as the online learning environments, expectations and safety measures are put into place.
Thank you for all your work. Please remember to take the time to take care of yourself, eat some great food and enjoy your families over the next few weeks. You deserve it! Our next newsletter will be released in February, so we will see you in the New Year!
“Keep your holiday diet balanced, a cookie in each hand.”
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Jake Welchans - Iowa Department of Education
The Clearinghouse for Work-based Learning is currently working with the AEA system to offer teachers a mini-grant opportunity where they can work with their Area Education Agency consultant to launch a project and capture the process. Participants are being asked to create a video of their experience and also build a project facilitation guide. The details are outlined at Clearinghouse for Work-Based Learning Project Launch Mini-Grant .
Our goal is to distribute these grants across the AEA regions (four projects launched per region). This opportunity is open to PK-12 educators, any discipline. We are hopeful that we will get a wide variety of classes (and standards) in which projects are launched!
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Kristy Volesky - Iowa Department of Education
Earlier this fall the Iowa Intermediary Network launched a series of free, live, virtual events connected to Career and Technical Education (CTE) Standards. The statewide events provided opportunities for educators to connect content to industry partners from across the state. Each event was recorded and are available for free download on the Intermediary Website.
Coming Soon: Build University Series that will highlight different careers in the trades. The first careers highlighted will be the electrical pathways in December. Register to attend live or automatically receive the recording of the event. Check the website for additional events coming soon.
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Katy Blatnick-Gagne - Iowa Department of Education
Individual Career and Academic plans should be a holistic process that engages a variety of methodologies to help a student learn more about their interests, aptitudes and passions. Many counselors reach out to me asking if they have the ability to incorporate activities into students’ career and academic planning that are not part of the CIS. The answer is YES! Break outside of the box, color outside of the lines!
Here are just a few ideas:
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Work with your Intermediary to provide middle school or high school students with WBL spectrum based experiences-Essential Component: Career Information, Career Exploration.
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Create school-wide activities for students to complete specific tasks like resume writing, job interview skills/practice, career fairs based on CTE Service Areas-Essential Component: Career Information, Career Exploration, Postsecondary Exploration.
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Adopt Meaningful Career Conversations (MCC) into your school/district. Work with teachers and provide them training to have MCCs with students in their classes-Essential Components: Self-Understanding, Career and Postsecondary Decisions.
When you use activities outside of the CIS, be sure to track that information. Some of you may be able to add those activities to the CIS database, others may need to keep the information on a separate data-tracking sheet. Don’t forget that your district's ICAP data is submitted to the DE in September. The better job you do at tracking the ICAP experiences, the cleaner your district’s data will be.
Have questions about coloring outside the lines when it comes to ICAP? Let’s chat! Feel free to contact me at Katy Blatnick-Gagne or 515-681-6733.
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Christina M. Sibaouih - Division Administrator, Community Engagement
Iowa College Aid's Course to College Program continues to help students accomplish two crucial steps of the college-going process: submitting an application and completing the FAFSA. We organized two statewide virtual events for high school seniors to submit their college/postsecondary application in September and November. The event pulled together over 50 colleges to host 200+ application completion sessions. We also started distribution of an automated FAFSA report.
This is the third year that we have provided these student-specific reports to all Iowa high schools, and we continue to be the only state to do so. Additionally, private schools that are registered with our Course to College program are now receiving the FAFSA report. The statewide FAFSA completion rate as of November is 25%, down about 6% from this time last year.
Iowa College Aid has also introduced a new feature to our Virtual Coach Program. In addition to signing up to receive text messages from our virtual college coach, students and parents can now schedule one-on-one virtual appointments to help with various college topics, such as FAFSA completion, scholarship search, making the most out of a campus visit, and more!
The Iowa College & Career Readiness Academy will begin the next session of courses on January 11th. The session includes 101, 301, and 501. Participants may register for license renewal credits, graduate credits, or no credits (free), and can also earn two certificates and a digital badge. A new Academy course, focused on K-5 college and career readiness strategies, will be available in early 2021. For more information and registration links, visit our website.
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Sheryl Cline, President
Happy Holidays from ISCA!
Thank you to everyone who attended our virtual conference in November. If you missed the Houston Kraft Keynote on Tuesday morning, it is now uploaded to the conference website. If you missed the conference, there is still time to watch the sessions. All conference participants will have access to all conference content through February 28th. Simply register at the $60 member rate or the $90 non-member rate. You can also bundle next year’s membership fee with the conference for only $95!
Membership Renewal has begun for the 2021 membership year. Current school counselors can renew at our professional membership level for $40. Retired and student members receive a discount. Anyone who is not a school counselor or in a school counselor-related role (AEA, counselor educator, or counseling coordinator) is invited to join as an associate member.
ISCA is happy to announce our members-only Self-Care Series starting in December! We will kick things off with a virtual trivia night for the whole family! Watch your member emails or check our website for opportunities to gather and engage with self-care activities. Webinars will be offered before, during and after school and include cooking, guided meditation, crafts, and guided fitness activities. Start the new year off well by taking care of you! Pre-registration is required and can be found in the “Members Only” section of the website! Finally, consider running for an open board position or joining a committee! We are always looking for new and diverse voices to bring to our work as school counseling leaders.
Best wishes in the New Year!
Sheryl Cline President Iowa School Counselor Association
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Natalie Wilson - Elementary School Counselor
Happy Holidays, School Counselors!
For this newsletter, I wanted to share a few go-to resources to support all learning modalities in order to support a variety of areas for your comprehensive school counseling programs. Families and students can sign-up to meet with counselors in remote settings quickly and easily through Calendly. Consider having families sign-up for a 15-minute show and tell check-in for our youngest students.
If you’re a PBIS/MTSS district, find a roundup of online resources with PBIS - Remote Learning. Develop a padlet of SEL opportunities your staff can easily access. Padlet also allows others to comment on each resource.
And finally, ISCA Keynote, Houston Kraft, and his Character Strong team offer free webinars monthly. Coming up on December 17 - One Practical Strategy to Focus on Equity and Reduce Burnout. And did you know Trish Hatch has a Hatching Results Podcast? We were so fortunate ISCA brought these two leaders to address our membership this Fall! Keep supporting the work they’re doing as they continue to support us.
Have a healthy and happy holiday season!
David Ford - Director
Hello Iowa School Counselors!
While initial evidence shows a decline in postsecondary enrollment for the recently graduated Class of 2020, this phenomenon was significant across the nation. Students and families experienced anxiety about leaving home, enrolling in programs without knowing how the semester or year would begin or end, and stressing about the realities of financing a postsecondary program that had the potential to look vastly different than years past.
AEA PREP has been working to provide you with much needed resources during this unique time in the postsecondary transition process. The recently released Supporting Postsecondary Transition for the Class of 2021 is a valuable resource for school counselors and teams working with high school seniors. This highlights the five steps taken to support the successful postsecondary transition for the Class of 2021 and provides direction and how-to videos to use throughout the school year to engage students and families.
A big shout-out to PREP Leads, Mark Shea (Northwest and Prairie Lakes AEAs) and Bev Berns (Keystone AEA) for putting these resources together!
Together, we can continue our efforts to meet the Future Ready Iowa 70% goal, school counselors are the most direct resource for students and families. Reach out to your AEA School Counseling contact, your AEA PREP Lead, or direct questions to AEA Prep for more information about how you can ensure your students are prepared to succeed in life after high school.
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Brittania Morey - Director of Communications
It is the busiest time of year!
While most might think this is a reference to the holiday season, for those of us that work with seniors, we know I’m talking about FAFSA and the financial aid season. While there are many things this year that are just different, one thing that remains the same is the importance of planning for the future, and this includes the completion of admission applications and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA.)
While there are many unknowns for next year, it’s important to complete the planning steps now so that everything is in place by May, June, or even July when students determine their plans for Fall 2021. Many colleges are maintaining similar deadlines for financial aid, so encourage your Class of 2021 to get their applications in, even if they don’t know for sure what they will be doing next Fall. It’s better to have everything in order and to wait, then to wait and try to apply after most financial aid is already gone.
Remind them that May 1st is Decision Day and that right now they are just taking steps to give themselves options next spring. They don’t have to decide anything right now, other than to complete those important forms. ICAN is here to help with virtual appointments, visit ICAN to schedule. In other news, check out ICAN Videos for the spring webinar schedule. ICAN will continue to offer Wednesday Webinars and the schedule is set through September 1, 2021.
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