Counseling Referrals

I don't know about you, but I am in and out of my counseling room all day every day. There are many times that a student or teacher will come to my room to talk or to request counseling time and, much to their (and my) dismay, I am not there.  Sometimes, I do not make it back to my room for an hour...or several hours. When I am finally able to get back to my room, I may have a handful of notes in my mailbox requesting counseling time. There are many times that I do not make it back to my room until the end of the school day which results in missing a student or two.....or 5. Plus, students are spending a lot of time outside the classroom when they come down to see that I am not there and write me a note. (They really like to take their time getting back to class.)

This is what the outside of my door currently looks like. Cute, but inefficient. My focus this year is to be more efficient and more available to students and staff.  Sooooo.......

I am trying something new (fingers crossed). 

You are probably sick to death of me talking about Google Forms by now but, I LOVE GOOGLE FORMS!!!! So here we go again! 

I created a "Student Referral" form that students fill out IN THE CLASSROOM without taking the time to walk down to my room. I have put the link on the computer desktops and iPads of every classroom in the building. If a student needs to see me, they click on the link, fill out the form, and submit. Within a minute or two, I get a notification that a Student Referral form has been filled out. I can check immediately, wherever I am, to see who is requesting counseling time and how immediate the concern. AWESOME!!!

Below is what the Student Referral form looks like. Extremely short and easy to do. If you notice at the bottom of the form, students can choose, "I need to see you....RIGHT AWAY, Sometime today or Sometime this week." I am able to prioritize the students I need to see first and then work my way through. I am SO excited, I can't even stand it!!! 

So then I got to thinking about the amount of times a teacher has come to talk to me about a student and says, "I have been wanting to talk to you for days/weeks but forget every time I leave my classroom."  Let's face it, if something is not in my calendar WITH a reminder that pops up, it does not exist in my world.  Everyone has so much on their plates that we forget or don't have time to accomplish everything.

In order to help the teachers, I created a "Teacher Referral" form and put it on all of their laptop desktops for quick and easy access.  It works the same way as the student referral.  

While I'm at it, I might as well create a "Parent Referral" form, too!  This one was a little more tricky because I wasn't sure how I was going to share this with parents.

I give a newsletter at every classroom lesson for students to give to their parents, so I created a QR code with the link and put it on the newsletter (I put the student one on there, too). Parents and students can scan the QR code and go directly to fill out the referral form.

To create a QR code, click the picture below.  It is so easy and took me 2 minutes to create.  

(This is just a picture of a QR code, not the actual QR code I made.)

I am really excited to give this new referral system a try. I will keep you updated on how it goes.

What do you think???  I would love to hear your feedback!

~Emily