Cate's Counseling Corner

 Ways to reduce test anxiety Here you will see a 4 step plan to help with texting anxiety! 

  Friendships One of the most common topics that I discuss with students is friendships. How to make friends, being a friend, what to put up with from friends, how to support friends, how to distance yourself from friends, how to walk away from friends. There is so many facets to friendships and even more facets to how to navigate the ever changing landscape of humans in general.  What is really comes down to is a few things- Find people who have a commonality with you, but also have some differences as well.  You want to make sure that you have  Surround yourself with people who have the same moral and value systems that you hold.  Find people who you can support and who can support you.  The quickest way to become a better person is to surround yourself with good people.  Do not go into friendships with the expectation that you are owed something from the person. Go into friendships and expect nothing and appreciate everything.  Its ok to say no...

 sELF esteem  One of the best things to do for our kids is to teach them to see their own goodness within themselves! One way to do this is by increasing their self esteem by utilizing activities to help them identify how they see themselves.  So what is self esteem? Self esteem is how you see yourself. This can be when you achieve something by yourself and you feel proud, it can be when you try your best at something, when you do hard or tricky things and feel a sense of accomplishment. It can be even something that you just enjoy doing!  This month we have been working with our ELC, LS and MS with creating their sELF esteem!  This is such a fun and easy activity to use with all ages. All you have to do is color the elf head and feet and in the sELF esteem draw or write the positives you see within themselves.  These can be anything like being a good friend, swimming, creating games for your pets, eating (one of my favorite has been "eating like a lineback...