There’s a reason the same explanation keeps showing up in every staff meeting, every training, every conversation about struggling students. It feels good. Problem is- It wasn’t built on evidence. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs became one of the most widely accepted frameworks in education without ever being meaningfully tested the way we use it. In this episode, we go back to where the pyramid actually came from, walk through what the research has (and hasn’t) found, and take a hard look ...
Mar 30
22 min
At some point, someone has probably told you to “find your why.” I gave that advice last week. I wish I hadn't. In this episode, I’m getting more personal than I ever have on this podcast. I’m sharing what one of the hardest years of my career has done to me physically… what happened when I defaulted to the weakest advice I could have given… and what the research actually says school counselors should be doing when purpose isn’t enough to keep you going. If you’ve been trying to survive t...
Mar 23
35 min
You said yes… then suddenly it was your job. At some point in your career, something changed. You stopped being the person students came to see and started being the person students got sent to. Behavior referrals. Classroom removals. Crisis containment. The emotional labor nobody else knew how to handle. And it happened one "yes" at a time. In this episode, I'm taking a hard look at how school counselors slowly became the system's pressure valve- justified by "trauma-informed care"- and why ...
Mar 16
26 min
"The research supports trauma-informed schools..." You've probably heard it in a staff meeting, read it in a district memo, or repeated it yourself. But when you go looking for the studies, something becomes clear: most people are citing a sentence, not a source. This episode is for the school counselor who's been asked to implement trauma-informed practices without anyone handing you the actual research- and who wants to know what it actually says. What we cover: What "trauma-inf...
Mar 9
26 min
Is managing student behavior actually school counseling? If you’re spending most of your week handling behavior referrals, putting out fires, and decoding defiance before you’ve even opened your calendar… this episode draws a line most schools never clearly defined. Because somewhere along the way, behavior didn’t just increase. It migrated. And it landed in the school counselor’s office. In this episode, we unpack how school counselors quietly became the default behavior managers in many bui...
Mar 2
26 min
In this episode, I’m challenging a common habit in school counseling: labeling student distress as “anxiety” before it actually meets clinical criteria. You’ll hear the research behind "prevalence inflation," how DSM standards separate normal worry from clinical anxiety, and the four-question test that will change how you approach 504 plans, school refusal, and all your anxiety-related counseling referrals. Because when we mislabel discomfort, exclusion, or instability as anxiety, we don’t ju...
Feb 16
28 min
What if the anxiety accommodations you've been writing into your 504s and IEPs are actually making your students more anxious? In this episode, I'm sharing a section from a recent masterclass inside the School for School Counselors Mastermind- one that had members circling accommodations on their plans before it was even over! You'll hear the research behind why avoidance-based accommodations backfire, how we're accidentally teaching students they can't handle hard things, and one dead-simple...
Feb 9
22 min
You hold a master’s degree. You studied crisis intervention, psychopathology, and therapeutic technique. So why is your profession still fighting to be seen as essential? It doesn’t have to stay this way- but the window is closing. In this episode, I lay out two possible futures for school counseling: one that ends in irrelevance, and one where we finally become the campus influence we were meant to be. What’s pushing us toward the wrong path isn’t what most counselors think. And fixing it wi...
Feb 2
43 min
Most school counselors aren’t ineffective. They’re mis-measured. In this episode, Steph challenges one of the profession’s most sacred assumptions and names something about her own work that most counselors wouldn’t dare say out loud. This conversation explores what it means to do catalytic work in a system obsessed with finished products, and why that mismatch is costing counselors their confidence. ********************************* Join the next-level conversation in my Substack. ********...
Jan 26
18 min
Caring is what makes you good at this job. It’s also what puts you in the most danger. If you’re a school counselor who still cares deeply about students, but you’ve noticed yourself feeling flatter, heavier, or more guarded than you used to- this episode is for you. You’re still showing up. Still doing the work. But the caring itself has started to weigh on you, and you don’t know why. In this episode, I talk about a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from being busy or overwhe...
Jan 19
22 min
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