NORTHWEST REGION
Greetings and Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a restful vacation and your
mind, body, and heart are refueled for the upcoming semester. It’s a long stretch until
Spring Break but we are ready to hit it running here in the Northwest Region.
For those of you who attended the Fall Conference in Ft. Smith I hope you enjoyed it as
much as I did! We were in a brand new location, had plenty of room for our sessions,
beautiful facilities, and gained much new learning. As usual we had lots of fun mingling
with fellow counselors too.
If you didn’t get to attend this year’s conference you’ll want to mark your calendars now
for next year’s conference again in the same location. We were treated very kindly and
are looking forward to returning to the great city of Ft. Smith.
There were several things discussed at the NW business meeting at the fall conference
that I’d like to bring to your attention. Northwest counselors broke into groups and
discussed where they’d like to see ArSCA in 5 years and then 10 years. Many
suggestions were made and much information was gained from this activity. Some of
these ideas will be shared in the near future.
Also in the discussion was the possibility of future mini-conferences to be offered in
strategically placed locations around the state for all counselors to have access to relevant
professional development. These conferences would cover such “hot topics” as suicide
prevention, career planning, crisis, technology, national board certification and others.
We also reminded counselors of the upcoming conference dates in the spring and
summer. Our spring Career Conference will be in Eureka Springs on March 5th-6th and
our ArSCA summer conference will be in Little Rock from June 7th-9th. At the summer
conference we will be announcing our regional and state counselor of the year awards.
The other important thing to remember is our Children’s Hospital Fundraiser!
February is our month to totally focus on our activities. Please get involved in our
community service project to help raise money for a worthwhile cause. Anything your
school can do to raise money this spring is appreciated and will be turned in at the
summer conference.
Boy! What a great experience it has been for me to be the NW President! As I’ve gone
throughout this year’s activities I’m reminded of what I felt the first time I rode a roller
coaster. Due to me moving into this position a whole year earlier it reminded me of the
anticipation of the climb up that leads to the first BIG drop. I noticed there wasn’t much
time there and then DOWN the tracks I’ve gone about 100 miles per hour. I’ve been
riding fast, going up, down, and all around but it’s been exhilarating. I’ve enjoyed it and
would jump back on and ride again.
As we all know our economy has made it incredibly difficult this year for many of our
families and we know that counselors are such an agent of hope for families and children
placed in our care. There is such a high level of need but I hope we remember it’s not
only the big things that help; it’s the little ones that add up to really big things. I’ve
recently been reminded of this fact and I’d like to share it with you.
We had a new student enter our building and I introduced him to our school, to
teachers, and to students on his first day with us. I checked back with him at the end of
the day to see how his day went and he told me it was great. I saw this same young man
the next day; asked him similar questions and got the same answers.
After a few days I was walking down the hall getting ready to leave for the day and the
boy came out from a hallway to walk evenly with me; I said hello to him, used his name
and asked how things were going. As we were talking a parent approached and asked if I
was the school counselor and I answered, “Yes”. A few moments after speaking to the
parent this boy continued to walk with me down the hall. He looked up at me and said,
“Oh, so you’re the counselor”? I told him he was right. He looked up at me with his
pretty blue eyes and said, “Oh, well that explains it!” I was curious and asked, what he
meant. He said, “You know what your job is?” “You make people smile”!
I hadn’t thought that in a very long time but it’s the smiles we put upon the faces that mean
the most. I hope we all remember that sometimes it’s the little things that help.
Have a wonderful spring semester and we hope to see all of you at the spring or
summer Conferences.