4 Tips for a Kick-Butt School Counseling Newsletter

School counseling newsletters can be an important communication piece that showcase all the wonderful things your doing in your counseling program and updates on important things to come. However, starting a newsletter can be somewhat daunting and seem a little overwhelming. In this article, I will give you four tips to get started and stay constant with a kick-butt school counseling newsletter!

Tip #1 : Include “Want to Read” Information

School counseling newsletters are different from teacher newsletters because they are talking about the student body as a whole. It’s wide coverage of what you’ve been doing in classroom counseling and updating them on things that are to come, such as group topics, community service projects, etc.

Newsletters can also serve as a teaching tool to teach others about your school counseling program. Get rid of the “Oh, I didn’t know you did that!” and “What do you do all day?”, by incorporating teaching tid-bits about your role as a school counselor. Each month take a small part of your role and talk about it in your newsletter and maybe mention why it benefits students and the school.

Depending on who you are writing to, your “news” may be a little different. I do a Family Newsletter and a Staff Newsletter… I know crazy right! But in all honesty, it’s helped so much to separate the two! I did a survey a couple years ago and found that several teachers and staff did not know about my role as a school counselor.

It seemed like there was miscommunication about my role and how I can best serve students and families at school. So, I started teaching staff in my newsletters! The last time I gave that survey, everyone knew about my role and it seemed like staff expectations for serving students were aligned with my role. Win-Win, right!

Here’s a little more about what I include in both my school counseling newsletters…

Tip # 2: Stay Consistent

Tip number two seems like a no-brainer… but, it’s one of those things that’s easier said than done!

First of all, I like to remind myself of my newsletter goal. What am I trying to accomplish with my newsletters? I’m not just writing them for fun! Every school counseling newsletter serves a purpose and needs to get into the hands of my families and staff. After thinking about my goal, I think about when their going to need this information and make a decision on how often I will create the newsletters.

You can do weekly, monthly, quarterly or by semester depending on your style. I like to do mine monthly because I can easily go over the topics I taught in Classroom Counseling and give them any upcoming important dates. How often you send a newsletter can also depend on what platform you’re using. For example, if I choose to do a digital email blast and send out short, relevant information, I may choose to do it weekly. However, if I’m doing a program-wide, four page, detailed newsletter, I may choose to do one a semester.

For me the middle of the road is where I fall! I like to do a paper handout once a month! Since I design it online, I do upload it to my school counseling page. I also create a second newsletter monthly-ish for the staff and just email that out.

Tip # 3: Make Newsletters Eye Catching

You want to make your newsletter look appealing to where parents and staff will want to take a look at it. If it looks like a letter or really bland, they may toss it to the side and not take the time to read it.

However, there are tons of ways to make newsletters look amazing that doesn’t take a lot of work. The number one thing in creating a newsletter is to start with a template. You can create your own template, buy a pre-made template from TpT or an find an online template.

This is the BEST way to stay consistent and make things easy on yourself.  Once the template is made, use the same one every month. You will already have the headings made so the only things you will need to update is the text information and pictures.

Freebie Alert!

Here are the newsletters I use for my Counseling News for Teachers and Counseling News for Families!

Now that I have a template… I just update the info every month! Super easy!

Click on the images below to get access to a shared template on Canva! You need a Canva.com account and then you can make a copy for yourself and tweak it as needed!

 

Tip #4: Give Newsletters Out to Everyone

As I mentioned before, I like to create two templates and write two different newsletters. I do this because I need to update two different audiences. I like my staff to know more specific educational aspects of my counseling program and have SEL teaching tid-bits.

For parents, they need to know more of the community based information with resources, standards I taught and parenting tid-bits. This allows me to give information to specific people who need it… making it more desirable for them to read because it specifically pertains to them.

Once the newsletters are finished, I send one home with every student and post it on my school website! Staff news gets sent out with the monthly classroom counseling schedule. That way I know they are opening the email! LOL!  

 

I would love to hear about your school counseling newsletter system! How often do you send them out? What’s your favorite thing to include?