Ms. Gee's Counseling Corner

Wow, we made it through October and the first 9 weeks of school. This week, the students at campus were buzzing with anticipation of the upcoming Halloween holiday. There was lots of talk about ways families were planning to safely celebrate and tons of excitement around creative costume ideas.

Students continue to gather in classrooms and virtual classrooms to learn, grow and connect, and it is so fun to be a part of each students journey in this unpredictable year. I am thankful for a community that is supportive and gracious and hope you all have a safe and warm holiday weekend.

Fifth grade parents... Mark your calendar. I will be hosting a virtual counselor coffee from 8:00-8:45 on Friday, November 13th to talk specifically about middle school transitions, magnet school programs, and the application process.

Please join the link below then. I'm excited to see you on Friday, November 13th.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/2365528041?pwd=M21oOHVWZVpYMml1ZmE3SmE0Y0N1Zz09

Meeting ID: 236 552 8041

Passcode: Kindness

We will continue to do fifth grade leadership, BUT it will look different now that we have some students on campus and others continuing to learn at home. Leadership will now take place in your child's homeroom and it will be right after morning meeting from 8:10-8:40.

I will be working with small groups of students to complete announcements and help with big projects, like No Place for Hate. This week, this time will continue to be spent with your homeroom and starting next week, we will discuss with students what leadership will look like moving forward.

We want to continue to make this optional for students, but we are still working out logistics. Please be patient as we are trying to figure out the best way to navigate this. Thank you.

In order to view announcements please log in with your students account. The announcements are posted at the top of the Bryker Woods Community page under "Announcements." If you want to go back to view earlier announcements you can click on the announcements tab and you can see all earlier posts.

I am still working on the best way to put the video together, so please bare with me as it is bound to change over the course of the next few weeks.

This school year, we have a Bryker Woods Counseling Blend Page. Each homeroom teacher should have a link for it on their personal home pages.

What you can find there...

• Zoom link for office hours and lunch bunches
• Community resources (Agencies offering group/individual counseling in the community)
• Weekly newsletters
• Asynchronous lessons K-5th
• Student request forms
• Parent/Teacher request forms
• Student resources (Peace room and SEL Library)

Please feel free to look at this page and play around with the different tools

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be meeting with every student to do a general check-in with them. We know that during this time of navigating a global pandemic, that everyone is operating on some level of trauma. The goal of this check-in is to simple understand from the students perspective how they are feeling/functioning at a social, emotional, and academic level.

The check-in will be completed during students asynchronous time so they will not be missing any direct teaching. I will start with our fifth grade students and will work down by grade level. I will communicate with your students teachers to conduct a sign-up to meet with every child.

I am currently working on check-ins with all of the students that are on campus right now and then will reach out to those doing remote learning in the next week or so.

Email: Kathryn.gee@austinisd.org
Website: https://brykerwoods.austinschools.org/
Phone: 512-414-7198