Positive Impact Felt by Students, Educators Alike
By Kristin Clark Taylor
Racquel Lambert, a school counselor at Hollywood Elementary, in College Park, Maryland, knows exactly how to reach, teach, comfort, and calm her students.
Lambert is a school counselor, yes. But she’s also a mentor. A protector. A tireless advocate. In many ways, she’s an architect, too, because she has the blueprints, the skills, and the schematics she needs to build self-confidence, self-awareness, and compassion in her students.
A Beautiful Blueprint
The blueprint she uses to build a caring, compassionate learning environment where her students feel valued, where they feel heard, and where they feel safe – regardless of the challenges they might be facing outside of the classroom – is QuaverReady.
By any measure, it’s a beautiful blueprint indeed.
This beautiful blueprint has many benefits: For a busy counselor like Lambert, ease of use is essential. What she describes as a “game-changer” is the fact that “I can find everything I need – even the printables! – very quickly, based on my needs at that particular moment, and based on what my students happen to be facing when they walk in. It’s just easy to navigate. That counts for so much. I just go to Resource Manager, and we’re off!”
Lambert ticks off another benefit: The customizability of the curriculum. When a student walks in feeling sadness, frustration, or anger, she can meet them right where they are – not just with an open heart, but with a timely, topical lesson or song that allows them to explore and expand upon what they’re experiencing … in real-time.
“There are so many songs that are helpful to me as a counselor,” she says. “‘Anger’s Not the Boss of Me’ is a real favorite. Everybody loves singing it – including me!
Impact, Inspiration, and “Interventions”
QuaverReady provides resources that reach all learners, in every conceivable educational setting, whether you’re interacting with your students in a classroom environment or in a counseling setting.
A quick peek at the Interventions resources (below) gives you an idea of how you can create your own “blueprint” to design and customize these tools in a way that brings the greatest benefit and ensures the most positive impact on your students. QuaverReady offers four types of interventions:
- Individual Interventions
- Small Group Interventions
- Behavior Resources, and
- Peace Corner Resources
An “Added Bonus”
Racquel Lambert appreciates the fact that these resources are fully aligned with the five core competencies, but she also expresses gratitude that the Quaver resources “go above and beyond” the traditional competencies to deal with sensitive issues like bullying, for instance.
“If one or several of my students are dealing with bullying, I know I have a resource right on hand that can allow us to talk about bullying in a productive way, without fear,” she says. These kinds of open discussions create space to diffuse difficult situations.
Yes, Racquel Lambert is a counselor extraordinaire who loves and cares for her students every single day, in every single way.
But she is also an architect extraordinaire because she is designing dreams for her students. Using QuaverReady resources, she is creating a learning environment of compassion, understanding, and self-awareness that, when combined, stand as tall as the tallest skyscraper.
And her students stand just as tall.
Kristin Clark Taylor is an author and a journalist.
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For more information about QuaverReady go to www.quavered.com/ready.
