About the Counselor

Counselor's Role

At Smith Elementary, the counselor works with students, parents, and teachers to provide a "wrap-around" comprehensive counseling program to support academic and emotional growth. The counselor provides individual counseling, group counseling, and guidance lessons in classrooms,  provides resources, and social emotional support. The counselor assists with academic planning and career counseling.   In addition, the counselor also partners with staff members, parents community stakeholders to best meet the needs of our students. 

Calm Down Spots

During the 2022-2023 school year, Smith Elementary created  SEL Calm Down Spots in the Hallway.  Due to limited space at the time, we did not have an available space for an SEL room, so we thought outside the box and created  designated Hallway spaces on campus to help students have access to additional safe spaces to self-regulate and reset big emotions.  Students are encouraged to  recognize the signs and signals in their body that they need to self-regulate, they ask their teacher to visit the  Calm Down Spots for three to five minutes. They set a timer and self-manage their time . Once their time is up, they return the tools used and return to class to continue learning for the day.

What's a Leopard without its S.P.O.T.S?

We take great pride in being Smith Leopards! At Smith Elementary , S.P.O.T.S  is implemented school-wide as part of our PBIS.  Our initiative is to cultivate leaders by encouraging them to show their Leopard S.P.O.T.S: We practice SELF-CONTROL when possible, PERSEVERE when things are hard, take OWNERSHIP through their choices, promote automatcity to THINK for themselves, and to always STRIVE for excellence!

Smith's PBIS System

The goal of our House System is to ensure that our school promotes self-worth by modeling positive relationships that foster unity and excellence to prepare them for real world experiences. There are four houses (House of Grit, House of Empathy, House of Integrity, House of Respect) united as one family where everyone belongs. Every staff member belongs to one of four houses. Each PreK-2 Teacher represents a class wide house. The first full week of school our 3rd-5th grades students were sorted into a house.  Then students earn class or individual house points based on attendance, academic growth, and for representing Smith Elementary S.P.O.T.S. Each Friday during our assembly, leaderboard is shared along with recognition to students with the highest points and teachers with the highest giving rates. Each quarter a House Ceremony commences with challenges, chants, house colors and more to celebrate the quarter and reveal the top earning house. The House System has helped our students and staff have common language and behavior expectations around character traits to be a place where we wear our S.P.O.T.S. with pride! 

Leadership and Advocacy 

The counselor is an integral part of the Administration team and develops supports for students and staff. As the leader for mental health at Smith Elementary, the counselor developed Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lessons to be taught in the classrooms on a monthly basis, as well as daily SEL conversations through our SEL Leopard Time facilitated by the classroom teacher  every Monday morning.  The counselor also incorporated Mindful Monday's with Mrs. Soto. We saw the need to help students develop a healthy toolbox of  deep breathing strategies  and coping skills  to refer to during  big emotions and challenging situations. Our goal was for students to adapt these techniques and work through difficult situations in healthy and safe ways. SEL assists in building relationships , conflict resolution but also learning how to self-regulate in appropriate ways. SEL lessons help educators and students work together, build relationships, effectively communicate and build resilient emotional regulation habits. Students become aware of their emotions, learning to self-regulate, improving success in the classroom. Together, our campus is working towards establishing developmentally appropriate conversations in the classroom, building radical empathy for each other, and giving them an empowering voice in the classroom and our campus. Students are building authentic leadership roles throughout Smith Elementary as a result.