Shutterfly Photo Book

You will need to go to my blog and look on the right hand side to see the photo album.So my friend sent me a link for a free Shutterfly 8 X 8 photo book ($29.99 value), and all I had to do was pay shipping and handling ($8.55 total). At checkout, a message popped up that said if I post my book tomy own website or blog, I would receive a $10 coupon off my next order if I e-mailed them my link, SO, I am sending you a link to view my photo book from our short summer trip to Holland, MI.   I'm not totally sure we can call it a "vacation," since the water was SOOO cold and we were only there for 5 days, but I guess we can!  Enjoy the photo album

Sharren

Reflections on Blogging

Well, here it is July 6, 2012 and I haven't even begun to reach my blogging goals for the summer. My normal goal is to publish once a month during a regular school calendar year. My goal for the summer was to blog once a week and read lots of parenting and education books and become an online "expert."   Instead, I started thinking about what I really want my blog to be, and I  have it narrowed down to a couple of things.

1. I want to share what's going on in my world as a school counselor, whether it's just journaling thoughts, ideas, struggles, exciting moments, etc.

2. I want to share with parents, students, and other school counselors a few good books or websites on current and relevant topics in school counseling, parenting, and student growth to give some quick ideas on how to handle different issues that come up.

How often I journal is probably not that critical. Most people can probably only handle reading one entry a month, since they also read other blogs, update their facebook status, work, or parent!!

In one short sentence, I think that I can say that experience breeds expertise. When you want to know something about a topic, do you automatically run to the person who JUST graduated from law school, med school, mechanic or business school?  While a degree in something is valuable, it becomes more valuable when the person with the degree gets some experience under his or her belt.  I consider myself a normal, every day school counselor who processes and files every experience so that when students and parents come to me for advice, I have a lot of things to draw upon.  When you face similar situations day in and day out, you learn what works, what doesn't work, what to keep and what to throw away.

I think instead of pressuring myself to become an "expert" in school counseling, I will continue to journal about good books, good websites, and every day school counseling experiences.