President's Letter: Power of Connection

Blessings to all! I know everyone is busy this time of month with making connections to students, staff and parents, and in your neighborhoods and communities! The beginning of the year is a crucial time for us to establish relationships with our stakeholders and share our vision/goals for our schools. The stakeholders play an important role in our profession as they can help us with resources for our programs. With that in mind, I challenge you to reach out and make a new resourceful connection this month!

As you know, my focus this year is to connect with each other and share our stories. Something I would like to implement this year is a Counselor Spotlight. You are all rockstars at what you do, and it’s time to tell your story! In each issue of our newsletter, I will feature a school counselor who is going above and beyond to support students and schools and whose program implementation is successful. We can all learn from each other, and who knows more about our profession than school counselors? I will send a form on the Listserv soon that you can use to nominate a counselor for the Counselor Spotlight. Please give details about the work this individual counselor does within their school and the impact that is made.

Another way to connect with one another is ArSCA Connects. Below are the dates and topics for upcoming ArSCA Connects meeings on Zoom. The Zooms will run from 4:00 p.m to 5:00 p.m., and you will receive a certificate for one hour of professional development for attending. Please be on the lookout for the Zoom registration on the Listserv each month. Susan Whatley works diligently to connect us with professionals who can help give us extra resources and tools for our toolbox. If you know of anyone that would like to be a speaker, please contact me.

Please join us in the monthly ArSCA Connects:

• Tuesday, September 19: SmartData's Dashboard: Identification, Interventions, Data Collection
• Tuesday, October 17, 2023: Complete College Application Month
• Tuesday, November 14 (a week early due to Thanksgiving): Student Loan Authority: FAFSA, Changes and How to Complete

I pray that you all have a wonderful week, and please reach out to me or your regional president if you have any questions or need any assistance. We’re all in this together.

Contact Kelli Dockery, ArSCA president 2023–2025, at president@arschoolcounselor.org or kdockery@bryantschools.org.