Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you ever felt
like you're not being taken
seriously on your school campus,that you're just kind of seen
like this extra set of handsthat could do pretty much
anything and your expertise,your knowledge base isn't really
being valued and sometimesisn't even asked for?
(00:20):
Do you ever feel like that?
This week on the podcast we'regoing to talk about that, but in
a little bit different way thanyou're used to, and we're going
to be looking at a continuationof a conversation we started in
the previous podcast episodewhere I was talking about
artificial intelligence, or AIand using it in school
(00:43):
counseling and kind of some ofmy thoughts on that approach.
So if you haven't heard thatconversation, you might want to
jump back to the previousepisode really quickly and catch
the gist of what we weretalking about.
We covered a lot of groundthere.
We talked about the power ofconnection, the importance of
(01:04):
human interaction and theimportance of really developing
a concrete professional fluencywhere, if AI generates something
for you, you would be able tolook at it and discern if it was
a quality resource or a qualityrecommendation upon just
(01:26):
looking at it, and although thatsounds like it should be a
pretty easy task to do after all.
You have a master's degree inschool counseling.
The truth is, it's really goodat tricking you and making you
believe its ideas are great whenthey're actually not founded in
anything that we know inreality.
(01:47):
Ai has a way to go, my friends.
We also talked a little bitabout online content, about a
lot of folks just blindlydownloading things and utilizing
them and wondering why they'renot working and how introducing
AI into our school counselingworld like that is going to
bring even more headaches forpeople who are trying to build
(02:12):
some clout on campus, who wantto be looked at as an essential
part of the administrative teamon their campus.
If we're just blindly throwingresources at the wall and hoping
something sticks, we're notgoing to achieve that kind of
reputation, and so this weekwe're going to continue that
(02:33):
conversation.
I am going to kill a lot ofsacred cows and I hope it isn't
too painful for anybody, but Ido want to be real about this
and I do want to be honest aboutsome of these implications.
All right, but before we jumpin that, let me introduce myself
.
If you have not listened to thepodcast before, it is great to
(02:56):
meet you, and if you havelistened before, thanks for
coming back.
My name is Steph Johnson.
I am a full-time schoolcounselor, just like you, and I
am on a mission to make schoolcounseling more sustainable and
more enjoyable, because youdeserve real supports, not lip
(03:17):
service, not the same old tiredsuggestions you see and hear
everywhere else, but realsupport.
And so, through the School forSchool Counselors podcast,
through our community andthrough our School for School
Counselors mastermind, I'mlooking to bridge the gap
between what grad school taughtyou and what's actually going on
(03:39):
on your campus, so that you canfeel competent, connected and
inspired to make a difference,even if you're working in a
really difficult school.
Okay, so let's jump back into it, and I'm talking off of some
notes that I made over theChristmas holiday.
I had my AirPods in and I wasjust kind of talking in stream
(04:03):
of consciousness style, all ofmy thoughts about AI school
counseling, what I've learnedfrom true experts in the field
and where I think this is goingfor us in not only the school
counseling industry but ineducation as a whole.
So I want to start by talkingabout the perception of our work
(04:24):
, and I've hit on this in aprevious podcast episode when I
was talking about the perceptionof teachers' pay teachers'
materials and I really feel likeI'm harping on this in this AI
podcast series and I guess I ambut there are just so many
unintended consequences fromthose things and at face value
(04:48):
they look great, right?
Hey, we're all helping eachother, we're creating these
resources, we're sharing them.
This is great.
We're all going to help eachother out when, in actuality,
the research tells us otherwise.
The truth here tells usotherwise.
(05:10):
The truth here, the empiricallyvalidated research, says that
most Teachers Pay Teachersmaterials are absolute garbage.
And I'm not calling out any onecreator, I'm not calling out
any one person.
There are a few good ones outthere.
I have about three Teachers PayTeachers resources in my office
that I do use, but for the mostpart I don't even look at that
website.
It's not worth my time.
(05:31):
And, going back to what wetalked about in the previous
episode, a lot of that isbecause I've worked hard to
develop the fluency to be ableto conduct school counseling
business without having to relyon printables.
But, more to the point, that Istarted to make and kind of got
sidetracked, there are alreadymisunderstandings on campus
(05:54):
about what our role shouldactually be and with all of the
bargaining in the schoolcounseling industry about what
are school counseling duties?
What are non-school counselorduties?
What should we be doing?
Dang it.
I just want to do what I washired to do Conversations about
advocacy.
Prove it with your data.
(06:15):
Blah, blah, blah.
One piece that everybody'smissing and maybe this should be
a whole other podcast episodeis that we don't even really
know what we want to be doing asa whole.
In our industry, we have a lotof people who are perfectly
content to download resourcesoff the internet and use them
(06:38):
and call it a day, and theydon't want to give any more
thought to it.
And then we have people who aremore like me on the other side
of the spectrum, that are veryinto evidence-based, very into
empirically validated resources.
And then we have people allalong that spectrum in between.
So we've got to start agreeingwhat we need to be focusing on,
(07:02):
because I've had a lot ofrun-ins online with people when
I've suggested that perhapssocial emotional learning
lessons should not be providedby the school counselor.
You would have thought that Ihad suggested we all go out and
commit a crime because so manypeople are so invested in these
(07:23):
SEL lessons and they've been ledto believe that that is the
holy grail of school counseling.
But I'm going to be honest withyou I have never seen and I
have never heard about, in thethousands of school counselors
that I've worked with over theyears, about any tier three kid
that came around because of ateacher's pay teacher's lesson.
(07:46):
Correct me if I'm wrong and Iam open to feedback, give me the
evidence and show me how I'mwrong, but I can tell you that
again, through thousands ofschool counselors that I worked
with over the past four years,never, ever, has anyone ever
shown up to a support andconsultation chat and said I
(08:07):
found the magic key.
In fact, there have been maybeonly I'm trying to remember two
or three downloadable resourcesthat have ever even been
suggested in that forum, andeven those were created by
licensed therapists.
So just to give you someperspective on the kinds of
(08:29):
conversations going on in ourmastermind when we rely on these
print and pray resources, whenwe rely on the easy button, when
people see us doing that, whenpeople see us doing that, and
even as people in our schoolswatch us deliver those lessons
(08:49):
which I do thousand percentbelieve should be a part of
every school campus everywhere.
Not debating that at all.
Who should be providing it?
That's a different story.
But if our jobs only needed toboil down to printing these
curriculums and delivering them,maybe doing a pre and
post-assessment and calling it aday, we wouldn't have needed a
(09:18):
master's degree to do this job.
And so a lot of folks who takethis track in their careers are
selling themselves seriouslyshort.
They are seriouslyunderestimating their potentials
for impact, and it makes me sad, because one of the core
(09:39):
beliefs in School for SchoolCounselors is that students
deserve access to capable,competent and healthy school
counselors.
And if we are capable andcompetent, we should be beyond
providing these lessons,especially when they're
printables.
Think about it this way when ourstaff sees us show up with
(10:04):
these materials because they'reunmistakable right, because of
the graphics and the fonts thatare used and the way they're
presented on the page, becausethey're almost always worksheets
or printable games, right,sometimes slides, but they're
unmistakable Anybody on a schoolcampus can look at that
(10:25):
material and say that's a TPTresource.
There's no question about them.
What does that do?
What does that do to elevatethe perception of your role on
campus?
Think about that for a minute.
Are you showcasing yourexpertise and the depth and
(10:52):
breadth of your mental healthknowledge when you're printing
things off the internet andpresenting it to students all
day long.
Now, for some of you, you don'thave a choice, and I get that.
Some of you are in situationsat schools where you have been
told you are an SEL teacher,essentially, and you've been
(11:13):
provided a set schedule with setamounts of time and you're just
grinding it out with noprovided curriculum, so you have
no choice but to rely on thatstuff.
And I get it.
I so get it.
That's a whole otherconversation that we need to
have another day about advocacyand about how your national
(11:33):
organization right now wasfailing you, getting pretty
opinionated in this one.
But bear with me Back to thepoint.
When you show up with theseprintable materials, how does
that elevate you in the eyes ofyour school staff?
How does that elevate you inthe eyes of your school staff?
Because, like it or not, if youwant to advocate for your role,
(11:57):
if you want to be able to dothe school counseling job that
you expected when you got hired,you're going to have to be able
to make a case for that, andpart of making your case lies in
your staff knowing you andliking you and trusting your
professional expertise.
But if you're showing up withthat stuff that looks just like
(12:18):
the stuff they're downloading insocial studies and math and
English, it's not elevating you,it's not building trust in a
higher level of expertise, andso that's where I think a lot of
things have gone wrong in theschool counseling world.
We haven't agreed on what ourrole should be and we are using
(12:47):
a lot of subpar materials andundermining our own efforts to
elevate our field.
It's kind of profound when youthink about it, isn't it?
It's a lot to think about.
But then let's turn back to theAI conversation.
A lot of people online aretalking about this stuff right,
either directly, as in they'resharing resources or they're
trying to tell you how to promptAI, or they're indirectly
(13:09):
showing up in school counselinggroups, and that's a nice way of
saying disingenuously Cananyone recommend XYZ?
Y'all know a lot of times thosepeople are planted in those
groups.
You know this right In socialmedia if you see a really
open-ended question.
Or could somebody tell me alittle bit more about Platform X
?
I'm considering using it in myprogram.
(13:31):
A lot of the times they'reasking that because they're a
plant.
They've been encouraged to postthat question so that they can
get the conversation going aboutthat resource, so that maybe
other people will get interestedin it, maybe they'll go Google
it, maybe they'll check it outand use it, and sometimes it
gives the creator a chance toshow up and say, hey, so glad
(13:54):
you asked.
Let me tell you all about it.
It's all a farce, and so if youthink all of those are innocent
questions, think again.
If you ever see a question in agroup marked anonymous post,
approach it with caution,because that's the veil under
which a lot of these things aregoing through.
That's why we don't allowanonymous posts in our School
(14:18):
for School Counselors Facebookgroup.
The only way that we allowanything even close to that is
that if someone submits ananonymous request to me or to a
member of my team, we know whothey are, we review it, we
determine if it's legit and thenwe post it on their behalf.
(14:38):
Does it take a lot more work?
Yes, is it easy?
No, but is it effective?
Yes, because you don't see halfof that baloney going on in our
group as you do in other groups, and there's a reason for that.
A lot of the people who aretalking about AI right now are
(14:58):
actually affiliates of programs.
If you see them talking aboutone thing over and over and over
again, there's one called MagicSchool right now.
That seems to be a big push.
You know why?
They just introduced anaffiliate program.
That means, if these people canget permission to private
(15:19):
message other people, they'llsend you their link to join it
or to get a free trial.
And then you know what they get.
They get paid.
They get paid for recommendingthe platform.
It's not always on the up andup and they won't always tell
you they're an affiliate, eventhough they're supposed to.
They present themselves as anexpert, someone who knows all
(15:43):
about the field, and give theimpression of you know.
Based on my rigorous research,this is the best option for you
and in actuality, the only thingthey know about it is what the
company has told them.
They're just going after theBenjamins and they're going to
recommend whoever's paying them.
So just be vigilant out there.
(16:05):
I'm not telling you not to useany of this stuff.
I'm not telling you that if youand I were friends, I would be
disappointed in you if we werehaving coffee and you told me
you were using something with AI.
But I do think we need to pumpthe brakes a little bit.
To me, this situation is alittle bit like buying a car.
(16:27):
You never want to buy the firstnew model of a car when it
comes out, because there arealways problems.
There are always blips andburps, things that don't work
right, lots of recalibrationsneeded.
You want to wait to get yoursuntil it's established.
Then you buy the car.
(16:49):
Talk to some of the people whoown Teslas right now.
My apologies if you're a Teslaowner, but those things are
having a ton of safety concerns,electronics concerns, all kinds
of things, and the people whowere early adopters a lot of
them are regretting theirdecisions.
Wait until it's been validatedin the market.
(17:11):
Wait until it's been proven tobe able to do what it's supposed
to do, and AI is no different.
If you want to brag, if you'reinterested in the power play, if
you want the online swag ofbeing one of the first people,
you do you.
But in school counseling, myprimary obligation is to my
(17:33):
students on my campus and thenpersonally, my listeners and
members, and that's you, and soI'm going to be a straight
shooter on this.
I'm not going to pretend likeit's automatically the most
amazing thing that's everhappened in our field?
It's not yet.
It could perhaps be Again.
I think it's going to be a poorsubstitution for connection,
(17:55):
for empathy, face-to-faceconversation.
Those characteristics are goingto become even more important in
this new AI world because a lotof people are going to let
those skills go.
They're going to forget whatit's like to sit across from a
student and have to be able tocome up with something on the
fly.
Think about this how many timeshas a kid walked in your office
(18:20):
and you thought you knewexactly what you were going to
be dealing with and then, as youtalked with them for five, 10
minutes, you realized the realissue was completely different,
and then you had to adjustcourse quickly.
You had to figure out how tohandle this new reality.
Y'all that's professionalfluency, it's empathy, it's
(18:42):
expertise, and that's what we'regoing to need now more than
ever.
We're going to need now morethan ever.
We are going to be absolutelyflooded with these AI prompts,
ai suggestions, ai generatedresources, use, quotation marks
around that.
That's going to start floodingthe school counseling
marketplaces, and a lot of thepeople who are going to be at
(19:07):
the forefront of this are thepeople who are already creating
those kinds of content.
They see the writing on thewall.
They know what's about tohappen.
They're working to adjust track.
Maybe I'm not creating thesematerials anymore.
Maybe now I'm going to show upand teach quote, unquote people
(19:27):
how to generate their ownthrough AI.
That sounds like a great idea.
No, it's not, and if you wantto know about the limitations of
AI and why that's not a goodidea, go back to the previous
episode and listen to it.
Because AI lies, ithallucinates, it has biases.
(19:47):
It's not ready for prime timein school counseling.
Actually, that brings to mind arelated topic with AI in school
counseling, and that would beusing AI for more routine tasks,
not necessarily counselingplans or advice on interventions
(20:09):
, but things that are kind ofmore mundane.
I'll give an example.
Let's look at it through thelens of recommendation letters
for high school juniors andseniors, because that seems to
be one topic that comes up a lotonline where high school
counselors are saying this isgreat, I can use AI to generate
(20:30):
these letters about my students.
It's going to save me a ton oftime.
It's going to be so fantastic.
I hate to burst your bubble,but I don't think it's going to
be as awesome as it first seems,and here's why you may know,
over the past few years we'verun a program through School for
School Counselors called Getthe Job, and in Get the Job, we
(20:54):
helped school counselors reallyhone in on their areas of
expertise, the best way topresent that expertise in an
interview and how to create aphenomenal resume.
As part of that journey, I wasworking with national
(21:14):
organizations on things likeresume writing, interview skills
and things like that, because Iwanted to make sure that the
information that I was providingwas current and relevant and
valid.
So, as we were working withschool counselors on their
resumes, a lot of them werehaving trouble even getting a
call for an interview.
They would come to us then andthey would say hey, I don't
(21:37):
understand why I'm not gettingcalls for interviews.
I've put out 35 resumes, Ihaven't gotten a single call.
I don't know what I'm doingwrong.
And so we would have them sendus a copy of their resume.
We would look it over and therewere usually some very specific
problems that we could identify.
(21:59):
But one of the issues was thatthe resume was not created to be
successful with what are calledATSs Applicant Tracking Systems
.
That is really some olderschool AI that school systems
have been using for a long timeto weed out resumes online.
(22:21):
Did you know this?
And so when you go to a websiteand you upload your resume to a
school district, a lot of timesespecially if it's a bigger
district they're using an ATS,and so if your resume isn't
formatted correctly, if itdoesn't have the right wording
(22:42):
with it those kinds of thingsyour resume gets kicked out and
you don't even get theopportunity to get a call for an
interview, and so that's kindof the beginning of the AI that
we're using now.
So think about this If we'vebeen using ATSs to weed out
(23:04):
resumes for this long ATSs toweed out resumes for this long
because this is not a newphenomenon it's only a matter of
time until universities, whichhave multi-million dollar
budgets, begin using thistechnology to weed out
recommendation letters that havebeen AI generated.
That's just the long and shortof it, and maybe, as the
(23:27):
technology becomes more nuancedand more sophisticated, that
threat will be eliminated.
But for now, I don't think thatAI generated recommendation
letters are your best option.
So keep that in mind, and ifyou decide to go down that road
and your students are not beingsuccessful with those letters.
That may be a large part of why.
(23:51):
Last thing I'll bring up is alot of people in online school
counseling groups asking forprompts.
I need help working with thisstudent on this issue that has
these kinds of concerns.
Blah, blah, blah.
We need to consider, as we areconsulting with technology, that
(24:14):
students still have a right toprivacy.
Consider how AI learns andgrows.
It learns and grows through theinformation that's provided to
it, what it does with it and thekind of feedback it receives
because of its actions.
And even if it's telling youthat it's not storing
(24:35):
information, at least overtly,it's still storing aspects of
that conversation.
In my opinion, in my opinion,kind of unethical to enter
student information into AI.
I don't think a lot of peopleare talking about this or even
thinking about it, but it'sworth bringing up.
(24:57):
You might remember back in 2020,the good old COVID times.
Whole world shut down.
A little bit before that and alittle bit after was really when
the big Google push washappening in schools and
everybody was heading over toGoogle.
Google at that time was gettingslapped with all kinds of
lawsuits from school districtsover student privacy.
(25:19):
Did you know that they were notprotecting student information
in the way that they were sayingthey were protecting student
information in the way that theywere saying they were, and they
got sued and they lost a lot ofmoney over that and eventually,
hopefully, they refine theirpractices.
But it just goes to show thatan assurance isn't a guarantee,
(25:45):
and even big companies likeGoogle know that information is
the new currency.
That's just currency in ourmodern world, and so, on our end
, when we value things likestudent privacy and
confidentiality so greatly, weshould never, ever, be putting
anything remotely close tostudent information in an AI
(26:09):
system.
Now, you know I get prettypassionate about my opinions.
I'm very direct about mythoughts on these things, and so
, again, I don't necessarilyexpect you just to grab onto
them and believe those at facevalue either, but I do want to
provide you with some differentviewpoints so that, hopefully,
(26:32):
you'll do one of two thingsYou'll either go do your own
research and become informed onyour own, or you will pick the
route that feels like it has themost integrity.
You are smart, you haveexpertise.
You do have the ability todiscern a good resource from a
(26:54):
bad resource once you havedeveloped a certain level of
professional fluency, but whenyou're working in an industry
that's as high stress as ours,that demands so much of us,
literally minute by minute, itjust becomes the default mode of
the majority of the people thatdo the work we do to just grab
(27:16):
on to what's ever easiestbecause it feels the most
sustainable.
And that's an industry issue.
Right, that's an advocacy issueAgain.
That's a whole other topic ofconversation for another day.
But within this world I feellike I have to present these
opposing viewpoints.
I want to broaden yourperspective and hopefully invite
(27:40):
you to challenge some of thebeliefs that you have about your
work currently and then make upyour own mind.
Decide what's best for you andyour students and your campus.
Utilize the professionalexpertise that you have and if
you've been relying on the easybutton too long and you feel
like you've lost some of yourexpertise, be diligent about
(28:03):
building it back.
You can do that.
Get reinvested in all thosejournal articles you had to look
at when you were in grad school.
Just look at five or six everymonth.
Log into your ASCA account.
Go to the Professional SchoolCounseling Journal, see what's
come out this month.
You could pick out a topic thatyou would really like to build
expertise in Something likesolution-focused approaches,
(28:27):
dialectical behavior therapies,motivational interviewing,
something like that, evenplay-based counseling techniques
, and immerse yourself in thatworld, read books on it,
refamiliarize yourself with whatyou already know and then learn
some more.
Or, if you have the gumption,invest in our School for School
(28:48):
Counselors Mastermind, where wemeet every week without fail to
build that professional fluency.
I don't think that anybodyspends years and tens of
thousands of dollars pursuing acareer with an intention of
half-assing it right.
But I also know that thecircumstances that we work
(29:08):
within, day after day, wear downyour resolve.
And then you're working hard atschool, and then you still need
your personal time.
You have family obligations andother things going on in your
life.
You don't want to have toinvest 100% of your time
thinking about your work, so youenter default mode because it
(29:29):
feels easier.
There's a happy compromisebetween those two, and so what
I'm really urging you to do iskind of look in that direction.
Reignite your passion that youhave for your work.
Whether you agree with me or youdisagree with me, think
critically about theseconversations, think about how
(29:53):
you feel about it, what feelsright and what feels wrong, and
y'all.
I'm always open to healthydebate.
That's why we meet in ourmastermind every week, because
when we have elevatedprofessional discourse, when we
can disagree but we can do it ina productive way, we are all
going to learn and grow and atthe end of the day, that's what
(30:17):
I am here for.
All right, so that was amouthful.
We started with AI, we went intosome different topics, but I
hope that, even through beingsort of a stream of
consciousness conversation, thatit was interesting and relevant
and useful to you and, most ofall, I hope it invited you to
(30:38):
think about your work in alittle bit of a different way,
because ultimately, when we dothat, that's when we grow,
that's when we get better andwhen we get better we can better
serve kids.
If you're interested in themastermind and the conversations
we're having over there, ifyou're interested in developing
(31:00):
your professional fluency in allthe ways that I described and
how to use that professionalfluency to advocate from the
inside out, you can find outmore at
schoolforschoolcounselorscom.
Slash mastermind.
I'll be back next week withanother episode, but in the
meantime I hope you have thebest week, be careful out there
(31:24):
and take care.