Stress Management in School Counseling

001Hello and welcome to this webinar about stress management in school counseling. Thank you for being here. In this presentation, we will explore interventions, resources, and activities that school counselors can use to reduce student stress and anxiety. The presentation slides in PDF form are located on the TEA school counselor web page which is listed on this slide. Feel free to pause this webinar for a moment here so you can go to the school counseling web page and access the presentation PDF in the resources section there. The slides PDF is right above the recording link. Let's begin with a brief introduction. My name is Stephanie Lerner and my role at TEA includes serving as the primary point of contact for Texas school counselors. I develop resources for school counselors and conduct trainings to support the effective implementation

002of comprehensive counseling programs. Before joining TEA in 2020, I was an elementary and secondary school counselor in central Texas. You can reach me at Stephanie. TEA.ex.gov gov which is located on this slide at the second bullet. The objectives for this presentation are to examine the current research on student stress and the school counselor's role in supporting student stress management. Additionally, we will explore tiered interventions that school counselors can use to reduce student stress and anxiety. So supporting students with stress management starts with collaboration. What does this mean for school counselors? Collaborating with stakeholders may enable you to limit non-counseling duties so you have time for student stress management and it also can enable you to implement a comprehensive counseling program in compliance with Texas Education Code 33.005. resources for this stakeholder collaboration are available. Um,

003we have step-by-step instructions for engaging stakeholders, aka our principal um on page 117 in the Texas model for comprehensive school counseling programs um also known as Texas model and I'm showing uh what it looks like here but you can access it at the um blue link in the slide. Um, another resource we have is appropriate school counselor duties are listed on page 119 of the Texas model. And then of course statutory expectations for counselor duties are in Texas education code 33.006. So regular whether it's weekly or monthly meetings with administrators is the key to facilitating this collaboration. in these meetings um include discussion of these three topics. School counseling campus data, Texas model guidance and counseling program alignment with campus mission and goals. So let's begin by defining stress anxiety and examining the research on

004both. Stress and anxiety are both emotional responses, but stress is typically caused by an external trigger, such as an upcoming test, while anxiety continues even in the absence of the trigger. Despite this difference, both stress and anxiety lead to nearly identical student symptoms such as irritability, anger, fatigue, worry, muscle pain, digestive troubles, and difficulty sleeping. Also, both stress and anxiety respond well to similar coping mechanisms which we're going to be covering in objective three of this presentation. According to the collaborative task force on public school mental health services um which is a report that states that rates of anxiety disorders among students in Texas have risen and the majority of Texas school districts report increased student stress and anxiety. The TEA student supports team provides a list of competencies that serve as a foundational guide

005for selecting best practices and research-based programs that meet the requirements of Texas Education Code 38.351. These competencies address students skills for managing emotions, which can of course increase their ability to cope with stress and anxiety. And these competencies also promote a safe and supportive learning environment that encourages student mental and emotional well-being. This is essential for Texas students to successfully learn, progress, and achieve their college career and military readiness goals. So stress management skills provided at each tier are a key strategy to support student success. In the third objective, we're going to explore how we can support students with stress management through the multi-tered system of supports model. But for now, let's delve into where student stress management is supported in statute. So to begin with, comprehensive school counseling is the law. What does this

006mean and how does it relate to stress management? Well, Texas Education Code 33.005 005 states that a school counselor shall work with the school faculty, staff, students, parents, and the community to plan, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive school counseling program that conforms to the most recent edition of the Texas model. Furthermore, the school counselor shall design the program to include a guidance curriculum to help students develop their full educational potential, including the students interests and career objectives, and a responsive services component to intervene on behalf of any student whose immediate or personal concerns or problems put the students continued educational, career, personal or social development at risk. So within the comprehensive counseling program, school counselors support students with stress management through the guidance curriculum and the responsive services delivery components. Specifically, the Texas model addresses

007stress management in both its guidance curriculum and responsive services delivery component sections. The guidance curriculum is in section five and two of the four content areas of the curricula include student stress management goals and competencies. These content areas are intrapersonal effectiveness and personal health and safety. Section four of the Texas model identifies student stress and anxiety as priority topics where students will be served through the responsive services delivery component. As we are talking about the school counselor role in statute related to stress management, let's also discuss parental involvement. Texas education code 33.004 004 is our school counseling law stating that schools must conduct a preview for parents of the comprehensive school counseling program. You can find it this statute linked in blue at the top of the slide. In addition, schools must make the guidance

008curriculum available for parents. How schools do this is a local district decision. So consider posting the comprehensive school counseling plan and Texas model on the school counseling web page with section 5 highlighted as the school counseling curriculum along with links to any stress management instructional materials. While this parental involvement school counseling law is not new and has been in existence for many years, you can find the 89th legislative updates on parental rights as well as other new and amended laws at tea's 89th legislature updates web page which is linked in blue at the bottom of the slide. Consider taking a moment here to pause the webinar and reflect on what has sparked your interest so far. or if you are watching this webinar with colleagues, take a minute to talk with them about the second

009question on the slide. Our next objective is to explore various stress management interventions that you can use with your own students at each tier. These activities align with Texas Education Code 38.351 which requires TEA to provide information and resources to support student mental health and wellness. So let's begin with an overview of multi-tered system of supports or MTSS since it is an educational framework we can use for stress management interventions. As you probably know, MTSS provides an intentional and systematic approach for meeting all students academic and behavioral needs. You can find additional resources and information on MTSS at the blue link on the slide. School counselors align their Texas model program with MTSS by providing direct and indirect interventions at three tiers. In tier one, they provide classroom instruction, schoolwide programming, or schoolwide initiatives. At

010tier two, they provide small groupoup and short-term individual counseling as well as consultation and collaboration with staff, families, community. And then finally at tier three, they provide indirect services to students through staff and family consultation and collaboration as well as referrals to other professionals. Let's explore how stress management interventions, resources, and activities can be implemented at each of these tiers. Our first MTSS tier is the universal level where all students receive instruction on how to reduce or limit their stress. We can do this through the following tier one interventions. First, normalize stress and anxiety as common human conditions in order to reduce stigma through every whole class or schoolwide stress management activity. Teach students the actual stress management strategies in whole class lessons. Next, we might teach students the counseling office self-referral process and healthy

011coping strategies in every guidance lesson. And finally, our fourth intervention to assist with schoolwide practices focusing on behavior and emotional regulation. Now, let's take a look at some resources and activities to implement these four interventions. The Texas model section 5 is a crucial resource for tier 1 stress management because it provides stress management indicators and competencies for student mastery which you can use to guide all your guidance lessons on this topic. The Texas School Mental Health best practices resource is another important tool since it provides both schoolwide practices for behavior and emotional regulation and it provides instructional materials for guidance lessons with stress management themes. One of my favorite Texas school mental health best practice sites for instructional materials on stress is stopbullying.gov. Um stopbullying.gov gov. Of course, as it relates to bullying and cyber

012bullying, has a lot of great information and student resources on stress management. You can find it linked in the second bullet. Finally, the Centers for Disease Control has a super one-pager that gives students suggestions for healthy coping skills to manage stress. We will talk about how to use it in one of our next activities. So for our first tier one activity, let's explore visual imagery. This is an activity that guides students to use color and breath work to calm themselves during stressful moments. Teaching students stress reduction exercises on a regular basis can normalize stress reactions um which dstigmatizes these common human struggles and this applies our first tier one intervention that we discussed in the last slide. The steps for this activity are first to explain breath work and imagery to the class and how

013these techniques help people to calm themselves. Next, we have students fold a piece of paper in half. They color one half of the paper their favorite color. They color the other half of the paper their least favorite color. And then they point to the favorite color and they breathe in through the nose imagining that favorite color filling them up with uh positivity and good things. And then they breathe out through their mouth while they point to the least favorite color, imagining bad thoughts, leaving their body in a cloud of that least favorite color. Finally, u process with the class how they could use this activity in a stressful classroom or home environment. Now that I've explained the steps, I encourage you to pause the webinar and try them out on your own so you'll be

014ready to model them for students in the future. The second tier one activity for stress management may surprise you because it's organizational skills. So, how does this work? Well, supporting students with organizational skills can reduce the stress that often accompanies disorganization and being unprepared at school. These skills can be taught in every guidance lesson through a 5 to 10 minute strategy on organizational skills. Let's go through the steps. First, discuss briefly with the class how organizational skills can reduce stress. Next, brainstorm specific tips for the chosen skill and write their ideas on chart paper, adding any that you think are missing. Alternately, you can pre-develop a skill checklist that students can follow, and I've provided an example of this on the next slide. Um, and then using the charted tips as a guide or a

015pre-written checklist model how to implement the skill. Then you're going to advise students to use the charted tips to complete the skill at a later time or even at home. You can have them fill in a request to complete the skill in the counselor's office, even if they feel like they need additional help with it. Finally, process how today's particular organizational skill could help reduce stress. And if you wanted to make this mini lesson into like a full class guidance lesson, you could actually have the students do the fourth bullet organizing activity in the classroom. Or possibly the class's teacher may have the students do this organizing activity together during class time at a later date. So, here are some suggestions for organizational skill mini lesson topics on the left side of the screen. And

016um in the box is an example of um that pre-written skill checklist that you could hand out to students if you didn't want to use the classes brainstorm tips um or or charted checklist for the chosen skill. The third tier one activity um leads students through an intervention on teaching students how to refer themselves to the counseling office. It is important to regularly educate students on how to refer themselves for both urgent and non-urgent help. When students know who their school counselor is, how to get help, and a few coping skills for reducing stress, their protection from stressors increases. So to facilitate this intervention, begin every guidance lesson with reminders about what defines a crisis um which is physical harm to yourself or others. Um with reminders about how to self-reer for urgent or non-urgent

017help. And then also begin that guidance lesson and every guidance lesson with a reminder to the class that school staff are mandated reporters. Um, next you would explain that um, practicing healthy coping skills daily can help us handle problems before they get to crisis level. And finally, teach the class a brief five minute coping mini lesson using one of the healthy coping tools from the CDC resource that we talked about called care for yourself one small way each day. Um, or you could teach them healthy coping skills from any other source that you're familiar with. So consider taking a moment here to pause the webinar and think about which tier one stress management intervention is most needed at your school and why. Um or if you're watching this webinar with colleagues, take a few minutes

018to discuss the question on the left side of the screen. So now we begin our exploration of the tier 2 stress management interventions, resources, and activities that we can use with our students. Let's dive in. So only some students on your campus or district will need additional targeted supports at tier 2. Let's look at some interventions we can use with them. Provide evidence-based small groupoup interventions for additional skill building on stress management. Offer short-term solution focused individual counseling um on managing behaviors and emotions. Make sure to get written per parental consent for both group and individual counseling interventions. And we have sample permission forms for you on the next slide. We will also discuss both group and individual counseling in a little more detail in the activity slides. Another intervention at this level is to

019analyze current school data, working with your administration to identify students with stress related needs who would benefit from targeted stress management supports. And then finally, work with community mental health professionals as a partner in a tier 2 planning team. Let's take a look at some of these resources um for the last two interventions. So on this slide we have various resources to help you implement your tier 2 interventions. First is the group and individual um counseling permission form that I mentioned um just a moment ago. Second is TEA's school mental health web page which has information on partnering with community mental health professionals. Third on the slide is the data information in the Texas model which can help you use and analyze current school data to determine who needs targeted supports. Next is the Texas

020model section five um which we can also use um for stress management uh student goals in group and individual sessions. So section five is not just for tier one but we can also use it for tier 2. And finally um kind of the same goes for our school mental health best practices resource that I mentioned in tier one. This site also has stress management group counseling curricula that you can use in your group and individual work such as Allstars prevention. So let's jump into some tier 2 activities that we can use to help our students manage their stress. Um first up is passive muscle relaxation. And this strategy involves releasing and relaxing various muscles. It reduces stress by slowing the heart rate and calming the person who's practicing it. I'm going to walk you through

021the activity steps and then I encourage you to pause the webinar and try it out for yourself. So, starting with the lower body, um breathe in through the nose for 5 seconds and then breathe out through the mouth. And while you do the breathe out, the exhale, um relax a particular muscle like your calves, um to the count of five. And then repeat this with three to five other muscles moving up the body. So for example, breathe in, exhale, and release your thigh muscles. Then breathe in, exhale, and release your stomach muscles. Then repeat with your arm muscles. So on and so forth. And you can end the activity by having the group um the the students in the group session maybe circle up with each student telling the group member on their right which

022muscle relaxation was most calming for them and why. Go around the circle until everyone has had a chance to share. Our second tier 2 activity is uh college career military readiness gem and it is called career conversations. So how does this work or even relate to stress management? Well, the idea of leaving K through2 schooling for a college or career can cause some students to feel anxiety. So you can use the following career conversations activity in both group and individual settings to address student career or college worries and to open lines of communication. Um you can find it in the second bullet linked in the second bullet. Um here are the activity steps. So first ask the student what aspect of postsecary college or career is most worrisome to them. and you can kind of

023get a discussion going about that. Next, use the questions and prompts at the career conversations post-secondary link to initiate a 10-minute discussion at the beginning of each group or individual session to explore their concerns and alleviate anxiety. For example, you might ask them, and I'm going to read right from the career conversations um that is linked in the second bullet there. You might ask the the group or the individual um you will likely experience personal and academic challenges while in your university, college, um or career program. Who might you turn to for support during challenging times? So again, that's just straight from that career conversations post-secondary um which is an ask a publication American school counselor association and it's linked on um the slide in blue. Um, alternately you could bring in a guest speaker

024such as a college student or a career professional who can provide information related to the career conversations prompts um, in a Q&A format maybe that you run in the middle of the group. Finally, process the activity with the student or students by discussing the quote knowledge is power and apply it to a career or college related um, anxiety. I want to end the tiers one and two part of the presentation with a really important idea about minimizing interruptions. It is crucial to minimize interruptions during our direct work with students. After all, if we are interrupted in our preventative, that is to say universal or even targeted stress management instruction. So, our preventative stress management instruction. Um, if we're interrupted from that, how can we expect students to know what to do when they face stressful

025situations that are just a regular part of life? Um, this is why it is so important to work with administration and staff to create a plan for handling student needs while you are delivering stress management instruction and support to students. You can even see on the slide on page 95 of the Texas model, it states, um, if a school counselor is providing guidance lessons, facilitating a group, or meeting with a student, the campus has in place a response plan to monitor a student in crisis until the school counselor is available. It is important to identify campus personnel who can monitor and ensure that a student in crisis is placed in a safe and secure environment. So consider taking a moment here to pause the webinar and think about which tier 2 stress management intervention is

026most needed at your school and why. Discuss your thoughts with your colleague if you are watching this webinar with others. Let's examine our final tier now as it relates to stress management interventions, resources, and activities that we can use with our students. So at tier three, a few students will need intensive supports at this level. School counselors support students at this level by providing indirect services interventions in the form of stress management referrals to school and community resources that treat stress and anxiety issues. School counselors also provide support at tier three by following up on referrals to community partners such as maybe a community-based therapist. It is important to create a counseling program protocol of checking in with referred students and maybe their parents as well um staff members that might know of the situation

027and of course uh community partners. So let's explore these interventions in more detail in our next slides. Um, in terms of tier three resources, we have um some great ones on this slide. Um, first, the Texas Mental Health Resource Database provides referrals in the form of intensive stress management support that is individualized to the student in need. Um, you can use the advanced filters that are linked in the first bullet um to find a resource that is best individualized to your students tier 3 stress or anxiety need. Um, next, the Texas model consultation and coordination domains on page 25 and the system support section on pages 101 to 115. give guidance on how school counselors can collaborate with community partners on intensive student supports. And then we also have the Texas school mental health guide

028which has information and forms for setting up your counseling program protocol to establish procedures to support students who have been referred for intensive tier three interventions such as hospitalization. All right. So, our first tier three activity is about how to provide student follow-up meetings. These meetings are an effective way to continue student stress management support as they move from a tier three intensive support um environment back to maybe our um campus. So, how do you facilitate these meetings? Well, begin by discussing the purpose of the meeting with the student and the caregiver. ask if they have any questions. Um, next discuss as needed if the students um stressor is resolved. Also, you can talk about um if outside counseling is occurring and what the school can do to support the student further. And then finally,

029if applicable, make a student support plan with the student and retrieve any outside paperwork um and and maybe school counselor clinician communication if consent for that is given from the caregiver. Even though most of our tier three work with students is indirect in the school counseling scope, um there are times when we are the first responder to a student. um and their intensive outcry. Um in these cases, we often provide direct support as we triage the crisis and connect the student and parent with intensive supports that they may need. As a result, it is often helpful to begin by helping the student to calm down if they enter your office in a panic. um leading the student uh through kind of a calming uh breathing exercise is just a great way to deescalate emotions. Um

030and palm breathing is a fantastic activity for this. So palm breathing begin by asking the student to focus on your hands while you teach them the following breathing hand signals. So it would start with uh palms up to breathe in and then palms out to hold the breath and then palms down to breathe out. And next you would ask the student to focus on your eyes while they're breathing and then lead the student through four to eight total breaths. They breathe in and look at you while you breathe with them and do the hand signals. This slide has a critical thinking takeaway for you to do on your own or with colleagues. You can pause the webinar now and follow the prompt in the boxes on the slide. Okay, let's review our main topics um

031that we've covered today. So, we learned about the recent literature on student stress and anxiety. We examined the appropriate school counselor role in supporting students with stress management. And we um explored various tiered interventions, resources, and activities that we can use to help our students reduce their stress. This slide has our main school counseling trainings and materials that we offer from TEA. I would like to point out a few bolded resources. So, the first bolded resource provides the best path to compliance with school counselors spending at least 80% of their work time on appropriate counseling duties. Um, especially with this first bolded resource, take a look at the revised 8020 policy presentation recording. Um, as well as the updated FAQs and brand new district compliance resource. Um, you can find all three of those in

032the counselor worktime supports hub, which is that first bolded resource. The second bolded resource is our MTSS section where you can find more information and resources on school counseling services and resources at tier 1 and two. And then our third bolded resource has our TEA school counseling webpage link where you can find other information, resources, and webinars including the group and individual parent permission that I talked about earlier and um that you have a link to as well. This slide has an action plan where you can create a stress management activity that you can use back at your own campus. Feel free to follow the steps on the slide in order to plan and implement your activity. And so that brings us to the end of the webinar. Um, thank you so much for attending

033and please reach out to the email on this slide if you have any questions. Have a great day.