Happy National School Psychology Week! Each day this week, we will send a message highlighting aspects of the overall NSPW 2023 theme, “Let’s Grow Together.” Click here for suggested NSPW activities for working with students and adults. We hope you find these suggestions useful as you celebrate school psychology!
Monday: Get Grounded
The NSPW Theme for Monday is “Get Grounded.” How have you used the NASP Practice Model to ground your practice or help grow your skillset? Please share on social media and be sure to tag WSASP and @nasponline and use #SchoolPsychWeek in your posts!
Help kick off National School Psychology Week by sharing one skill or mindset that is essential to your practice as a school psychologist along with the NSPW Poster image or one of your own images.
As individuals, we each grow in our way and in our own time. This growth is a process that is influenced by our engagement and interaction with our environment. School staff and caregivers are responsible for nurturing each student by supporting the student’s unique needs while utilizing their strengths to ensure healthy growth. This includes understanding how the child's context–family, peers, and community factors–shape their ability to learn and grow. School psychologists are critical to helping other educators understand what supports, strategies, and potentially even changes in environment, will best help each student. When school psychologists become grounded, we allow ourselves to become more firmly rooted in our school community, as a trusted resource to support students.
Tuesday: Nurture Your Strengths
Celebrate the wonderful aspects that make you, YOU! Nurturing ourselves and growing as a part of a vibrant ecosystem helps to strengthen ourselves, as well as the community in which we engage.
Today, color and post one of the coloring pages and share what this unique part of the ecosystem means to you. If students color pages, post those too! Click here for National School Psychology Week Coloring Pages.
Remember to use #SchoolPsychWeek and tag @nasponline and WSASP to each of your posts.
Engagement and interaction with others–being part of a vibrant community–supports our growth. While we can grow alone, we often benefit from the support of others and will grow and flourish when helping one another. Students and staff can cultivate a nurturing school environment by highlighting how one's strengths can work with others to support the growth of those around them. This includes creating welcoming and inclusive schools, helping to build students' social-emotional skills, and ensuring that every student is connected to a trusted adult. School psychologists can help students and staff identify ways to strengthen these connections and see themselves as being both a benefit to the broader school community and benefiting from it.
Wednesday: Cultivate Your Message
Effective communication is essential to getting your message across to stakeholders and growing sound school psychology practices. This is especially important as we advocate for systems change that will support school psychologists in their practice. Today we’ll use this theme to inspire us to action for NSPW’s Advocacy Action Day.
In honor of Advocacy Action Day, pick one issue central to protecting and expanding school psychological services and post a message or resource to your social media accounts. Supporting infographics can be found here (NASP) and here (WSASP).
Remember to use #SchoolPsychWeek and tag @nasponline and WSASP to each of your posts.
While it is vital to build one’s capacity for personal growth, we mustn’t forget that education is influenced by stakeholders at many levels. If you’d like to engage in additional advocacy activities, here are a few ways that you can amplify your message with school psychologists across the country. Your advocacy today is more critical than ever and can make a difference - and completing them shouldn't take more than five minutes of your time.
Here's what you can do:
- Use this link to send an advocacy letter to your federal representatives.
- Use this link to send an advocacy letter to your state representatives.
- Post a message to your social media accounts, reinforcing the message of protecting and expanding school psychological services. Don't forget to tag your representatives, and use the hashtags #NASPadvocates and #SchoolPsychWeek. Feel free to use these adaptable social media posts from last year to get ideas.
- Connect with your school board to see how you can advocate at the local level. Some ideas: subscribe to email newsletters/notifications of meeting agendas and announcements; send an email advocating for school mental health to your representatives; and join local education social media groups. Use our resource guide to advocate for school psychologist positions for additional ideas.
Thursday: Branching Out
Diversity, inclusion, and collaboration are essential for schools and communities to grow together. As we branch out today, share one aspect of your work that celebrates or supports the beautiful uniqueness we each bring to our environments, or the ways in which we support growing together.
Remember to use #SchoolPsychWeek and tag @nasponline and WSASP to each of your posts.
Click here for suggested NSPW activities for working with students and adults.
Diversity is a powerful ingredient in our growth. In fact, the way in which we cultivate our communities can be inspired by nature. Whether in an open prairie, a shady forest, or a productive garden, diversity fuels growth. Most plant species can survive individually. But there are many species that, when planted together, can contribute to the growth of another species planted nearby! Many plants can exist alone, but truly thrive together. This can be said for those who operate with a school community as well. Diversity in our schools is critical to how students see themselves and the world, learn respect for differing perspectives, and find common ground through their differing experiences. School psychologists have an ethical responsibility to encourage inclusive school environments where every student feels seen and valued. By growing together, we really can grow closer if we try to understand and acknowledge our differences through respectful conversation and self-reflection.
Friday: Sharing
As National School Psychology Week comes to a close, we invite you to reflect on how you have used your individual strengths and experiences to grow together with the school community. WSASP would also like to recognize and express our gratitude today to our school psychologist colleagues who are service veterans.
Post one thing you did this week that helped students, yourself, or your school community grow. Include a picture from the week or share the NSPW thank you image with your post. Click here to provide feedback to NASP about how you participated in NSPW activities this week.
Remember to use #SchoolPsychWeek and tag @nasponline and WSASP to each of your posts.
Every season contributes to a continuum of growth; there are seasons where growth is rapid and robust. For students, this can often look like learning new skills, mastering content, overcoming a challenge, or achieving a goal. There are seasons for building the energy required for growth. Seasons of rest are important for a balanced and healthy lifestyle allowing for personal growth. For adults and students, self-care or self- reflection, and time devoted to recharging rather than doing. Some adults may find specific professional development opportunities to energize and refocus. School psychologists can be champions in this process by evaluating needs, advocating to improve service delivery by reducing the student-school psychologist ratio, or assisting with other systems change initiatives to better support students.
