Mullen School Counseling

We are excited to kick off the new school year. We wanted to introduce ourselves to the new staff and also remind everyone about how the school counseling program operates in our building.

We are here to support you and your students!

Carrie Andrews teaches classroom lessons for grades PK4-2 and Rebecca Cottle-Makhene teaches grades 3-5. For any other needs either of us can be contacted.

Once a month you will be emailed a link from sign-up genius for you to schedule a school counseling lesson. Our lessons cover social-emotional learning, academic, and career topics. The lesson will be 30 minutes in length. You are welcome to stay during the lesson, but it is not required as we know you may need some extra time to get things done.

The body safety lesson will have opt out forms for the students and their families.

We will run several small groups throughout the school year. If you have a student or students who you feel like would benefit from a small group counseling setting please let us know. Some examples of small groups would be friendship skills, coping skills, conflict resolution, school success, impulse control, attendance, etc. New student groups will be led in the first month to get students acclimated. Most groups will be held by grade level and during Encore or at teachers discretion.

Students can access us for individual counseling in many ways. They can be referred by a staff member, a guardian, self referral, or based on our observation. Individual school counseling is not therapeutic in nature, and the purpose is to help ensure the student is available for learning within the classroom. If a student requires frequent access to us, we will contact the family and offer community resources. If you have a student concern please walkie, email, or call and we will respond as soon as possible.

As part of our PBIS initiative we use CHARM cards to incentivize good behavior. We will put index size CHARM cards in your mailbox, please assign each student in your class their own CHARM card. When you catch them making good choices and/or following CHARMing expectations (refer to the rubric placed in mailboxes) punch or sign a shamrock on the border. Once the card is filled out the students can place it in the grade level bucket in the front office. Students will earn a shamrock keychain and will have a chance to have their card entered into a drawing to be picked each Friday on the morning announcements. If your student's card is picked you may send them to Ms. Cottle's office to choose from the treasure chest.

Below are two ways we monitor and incentivize attendance school wide. Please partner with us in encouraging students to come to school everyday and communicating with families when students are absent.

1. Classroom attendance tracking: Similar to last year everyone will have an attendance tracker outside of your door (if you need one please let us know as we have extras). Please keep track of who is present and absent in your classroom by marking it on the chart. At the end of every week the counselors will reward every student who had perfect attendance every day.
2. Chronic absence bulletin board: This year the bulletin board in the main lobby is tracking chronic absenteeism by grade level. Our goal is for each grade to have less than 10% of students chronically absent each week. At the start of each week we will move your grade level rocket ship corresponding with your chronic absenteeism percentage of the prior week. We will also send out School Status messages to parents to make them aware of the rate for their student's grade level Please be mindful to take note of the board and encourage your students to come to school everyday.

If you have a student or group of students who need social-emotional support you may reach us either by email, phone, or walkie. For the quickest response time please use the walkie (channel 2) as we are not always in our offices. In addition, please feel free to stop us in the hallway if that is an easier modality for you.

Students will be instructed to let their teacher or family know if they would like to see us. In addition, they may stop us in the hallway to let us know.

We are all mandated reporters. If you suspect child abuse or neglect the report must be made within 24 hours. To contact CPS you can either call 703.792.4200 (county number) or 1.800.552.7096 (state number). After you make a call, you be need to fill this form to alert PWCS of the call. Lastly, please notify admin of the report.

If you would like support while you make a report, please reach out to the school counselors. We can't make the report for you or interview the child, but we can sit with you and help provide the necessary information.

A more detailed email will be sent out with all the CPS reporting guidelines.