Concord Counseling Updates

While watching the news this evening regarding the tornado damage to our school community, it is apparent that the damage was devastating to some of our families.  Please know our school staff is ready and willing to assist any student who has been directly affected by this storm.  Please call the counseling office at 729-2400 ext 7580 to notify us of immediate needs, such as counseling, clothing or a place to stay.  We will do our best to accomodate our Truman students and their families. Sincerely, Dana and Velina

   We are helping our kids to identify different kinds of bullying behavior at Lindbergh.  In the lower grades, (k-3) we are helping our kids to identify verbal bullying behavior.  In the upper grades, (4 and 5) we are helping our students to identify bullying behavior in several ways:  verbal, physical, emotional, cyber and gender bullying behavior.  Our definition of bullying behavior is when a person repeatedly tries to harm, humiliate, or intimidate another person.   Our older kids are learning that 70% of kids are in the witness role, 15% are in the target role and 15% are in the bullying behavior role.  We have been discussing the cycle of bullying behavior that can be broken:  hurt - anger - revenge = unhealthy friendship.  We are teaching the kids to stand up for themselves and for others, to  invite the target to safety, and to report the behavior to an adult.  I refer to these...

Dear Lindbergh Community, Thank you for your vote of support in passing Prop L for our school and community.  We appreciate all the work and time spent educating our community to uphold our children's education.  We are giving our kids a gift for a life time! Sincerely, Dana Lenzen and Velina Critchlow

Last week we celebrated Red Ribbon Week as a school.  As you will read we had a team approach to our message!  Each day we had a message on Flyervision and a theme of "dress up" to help us focus on keeping our bodies healthy and strong.  Our classroom counseling lessons reflected an awareness of healthy choices.  Our art teachers, Julianne Glossenger and Katie Goedde, guided our students in decorating grocery bags in art classes with a message about healthy choices and saying no do drugs.  The grocery bags were from our local Schnucks and Johnny's Market.  Our music teachers, Stephanie Buscher and Valerie Creech, taught our students songs in music class to support this message of saying no to drug .  This Friday, during our Fall Festival, we will enjoy a Drug Free Assembly message from a magician, Chris Egelston, provided by our P.T.G.!  Thank you to everyone for helping us to continue to teach our...

In second grade, we begin teaching the children how to take their feeling's temperature.  We teach them feelings are not good or bad, they just are.  We want them to be able to name and claim their own feelings and then rate or gauge their feelings by a number.  We call it our feeling's temperature. 1.  Piece of cake. 2.  A little twinge. 3.  Just a little uneasy. 4.  Starting to bother me. 5.  Not too good. 6.  Getting tough. 7.  Pretty tough. 8.  Really tough. 9.  Can't handle it. 10.  Out of control. This year we are going to emphasize: 1-3 as the green range (easy to control feelings) 4-7 as the yellow range (caution - more energy to control the feelings) 8-10 red zone (danger - it takes a lot of energy to control the feelings in this zone) What is your feeling's temperature?

This past Wednesday all of our Lindbergh Elementary Counselors received training from BJC regarding bully prevention.  After our training we taught our lesson to Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Bushman and Mrs.Valter's classes.  Each fourth grade class will receive a four lesson series on this topic.  Our first lesson was about the bully definition.  We defined bully behavior as a person repeatedly displaying harm, humiliation or intimidation to another.  This kind of bully behavior can be witnessed by verbal, physical,emotional, cyber or gender methods.  We are wanting our kids to be able to verbalize (use their words or give an I statement) as to what is specifically happening to them or to a friend and to be able to help themselves and others. We took this opportunity to introduce our counselors individually to the classes.  Mrs. Maddock, Long Counselor,  Mrs. Scott, Crestwood Counselor, Mrs. Toomay, Sappington Counse...

Dear Lindbergh Community, Lindbergh is the fortunate beneficiary of the Children’s Service Fund, a grant that provides school-based therapy and prevention services for mental health. Our students now have access to therapists employed by Youth in Need and prevention and treatment counselors employed by Preferred Family Healthcare. Christy Markham, Kristi Machica and Gina Poeppel are housed in our schools where they will provide individual, small group and classroom support.   They will also coordinate services with outside agencies as necessary.   In addition to school-based therapy, we have access to additional prevention programs offered by agencies such as National Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, CHADS Coalition for Mental Health, Safe Connections, and Jewish Family and Children’s Services. This is an exciting opportunity for Lindbergh students to receive the social and emotional support they need in order to become competent and caring graduates....

Mrs. Lenzen and I have been going into classroom for counseling lessons since the second week of school.  During our second visit we gave the kids an informal survey.  The purpose of the survey was to gain information to best support each child during this school year due to a major life change.  Students let us know if they would prefer to visit with us at recess individually one time or if they would like to participate in a group setting during recess due to the major life change.  We will be sending home permission slips for groups within the week so we can begin.  Please call Mrs. Lenzen or myself if you have questions.

As your school counselors, we want to make sure our students know how to contact us at anytime.  Mrs. Lenzen and I make it a point to be a lot of places during the school day to visit with kids.  We visit each classroom every other week, we visit students in the morning before school in the cafeteria, during the school day we see the kids at lunch, recess and we see students in the hallways.  As a special treat, each Thursday is "Counselor Talk" on Flyervision for our entire school population!  Students are encouraged to visit with us during recess times if they would like to talk one to one.  If we are not in the counseling room when the kids come to see us, we encourage them to leave us a note.  We want to work in a proactive, preventative manner to help our kids throughout the school day. 

Mrs. Lenzen and I have been visiting all the kids before school in the cafeteria, during recess,  lunch time talks and in the classroom for counseling lessons.  We each have an A and B week schedule to go into the classroom.  Mrs. Lenzen is visiting kindergarten and fifth grade this week.  I am in all the second and fourth grade classes.  Each Thursday am we visit the kids in each classroom through FlyerVision Announcements!  Thank you for helping the kids to establish good habits and routines at the beginning of the school year.  We have enjoyed hearing about your summer vacations.  The kids seem ready to fly into a great school year!

I hope you had a great time playing and reviving energy this summer.  We are all happy and excited for you to get back to school for a great year.