one ever they did most of the studies for concussions so it's new it's mostly newly protocol and so we'll just be diving into a little bit of that so let's get started this is princeton where did you go to college in how did you know you wanted to become a god as counselor i attended duquesne university for both my undergrad i am a graduate work it was kind of a strange journey the way that i got here i originally went for psychology all four years  came out of undergraduate and started a job at western psychiatric i was there three days and they were teaching me how to defend myself from potential attacks from maybe some of the residents that were on the particular floor that i was working on i had a friend from college who was going to be a school counsellor to talk to me about the job talk to me a little bit more about like why she was choosing it sounded fabulous so i quit my job at western so i i looked more into the program of the cane had for school counseling and they really had like a trial program so i started you know i think it was like three classes or something and they made you interview a school counselor i did all of that it sounded fabulous i went through the program and here i am gosh as a whole in eighty yeah so have you been ever since you said become a guidance counselor after your years of duquesne have you been working at pearson just the entire time yes now so i started off after i first graduated a lot of people that come out for education will find that you end up having a sub for a little bit i yes i got very lucky to get a job here so being a guidance counselor you guys got a new one this year right mrs simmons and so did that affect your last name is it all your and through us k right well yes so it didn't necessarily affect our last names we shuffled our last names of who we cover case wise about a year ago but that was due to student numbers it wasn't due to changes in counselor so we do that occasionally it's just a boy to kind of keep the numbers even you know things happen i would say probably every like five years maybe a little bit longer than that quite honestly we just have to research shuffle the letter so somebody is and end up with a whole lot of students  a whole just a little bit of them so yeah that's pretty much the same letters that i've covered since i've started here it's really only moved a couple degrees and so while being here since two thousand and eight have you experienced a lot of students that of indoor concussions throughout their school years yes and no so then this is another complicated one i would say that concussions came on to the forefront nationally around the same time probably five or six years ago something like that that's not to say that there weren't students who had concussions before that but i think that they weren't being fully treated the way that they should have been so i would say that the concussions have come to more prominence but that again doesn't mean that the numbers have changed any so yeah the concussion students i've been working with throughout is just their level of awareness around like what a concussion can do to you and what we should be doing here in the building to help those students has changed since i've been here so what is your protocol or how do you help students that have gotten a concussion during season or even off season of their athletic says so we have a whole protocol here at the high school that was developed in conjunction with the organization called brain steps what happens is a student who sustained a concussion and if it's right then during a game sometimes the coach or the athletic director will let miss call sick in the nurse's office know so then she'll send out a preliminary e mail so that students teachers saying you know for now we don't have anything from a doctor yet but we believe the students to send a concussion please follow these typical steps you know to make sure that the student's not being overloaded and that we're not exacerbating the concussion once we get a doctor's note from you know whoever the doctor goes or whoever the student goes to see that no goes to school also she passes it on to the grade level principal so mrs ragland for grades eleven and twelve or mr lawson that for grades nine and ten he he  or she looks at the note whatever the doctor has written and kind of synthesizes that in the language that's pretty standard for peter sounds like our teachers know these e mails that they received saying the student has these accommodations they've seen them a lot of times it's kind of using the same language the teachers don't get confused and it's pretty standardized so those go through the teachers right after that once the the principal has synthesize it and the teachers follow that protocol from there on out whatever listed in there sometimes concussions last a very short amount of time sometimes they last a whole lot longer just kind of depends on the severity of it how many times a student's been concussed and you know just kind of the circumstances ok so it's pretty much a sort process in order to really pass it along to get that thing going like a protocol you said so i'm curious so how do you help as a guidance counselor though to make sure the student doesn't get overloaded with work and such yeah so usually the teachers will touch base with us once a student does start to fall behind especially after a concussion you know they'll let us know that hey you know so and so is having problems in this class you may want to touch base with them so i will use call the student down and you know have a conversation about like where are you what's happening can you describe what's going on during the day another situation that might happen is the student's going down the seams calls the whole lot you know because they just need time to rest or they need to be in a dark room i'll check in with that students teachers and how to see like hey where are they if they're having issues that kind of will work with them to figure out a schedule maybe for makeup to figure out like which simonds can we make up if things are not you know if this make up list is very very exhaustive and things don't it seems like it's just not going to be helpful to pile all that work on the student who's hurt myself the grade level principal and the school also we have meetings every four weeks to discuss the students or can cost and to make sure that like whatever we've put in place for the teachers to have for them in class that it's still working or do we need to reassess and you know add something else in or change the way that we word something so it's a constant process of checking in already built in four weeks but it might be more than that just based on the students severely concussed yeah i remember last year i got my first impression in helping her out a lot and then this year i got another one so b i'm a junior high school now and i've so it is the same protocol we use the same exact protocol but the second or third even if that does happen to you know if you're congress multiple times this the things that you need in order to make it back to full health might change slightly and we're going to be looking for symptoms you know that may be a little bit more severe or that last a little bit longer again it's highly circumstantial but it really just depends on how badly you were hit maybe multiple times more you know if it was the same spot or or there's a lot of different variables so you kind of have to look at the situation and just determine what you're going to do individually even though there's a protocol  have you seen a lot of students struggle when they are because how they've been affected by it are the teachers oh here's an even better question how do you work with the athletic trainers helping the student back into the game it's mostly golf actually who does all of that she keeps in touch with the athletic director the director peeps in touch with her and they kind of talk it out and she usually will let are like us know so i don't have too much of a hand in that but the other part your question was getting concussed you said helping students and with their academics or teachers usually pretty understandable that yes so that's the same thing that i've seen this change over the past ten years like like i said it's sort of come up a national stage so before there was very much confusion about like what is this how do i treat this do i give them very little work or do i treat them like nothing's have been so i think there wasn't you know for me until the protocol was kind of put into place now i think the teachers pretty much know how this stuff works and they you know they're like oh yeah ok i know how to do this not a big deal it depends kids get varying levels of work though you know depending again on how badly they were concuss so somebody might be able to handle almost everything or they might not be able to handle hardly anything the biggest problem that i see and i think you know it's a blessing and a curse in the school district we have so many high achieving students they want to walk away from the concussion like it never happened they want to come back into school they want to get straight a's they want everything to be perfectly fine and they don't want to slow them down and i get that you know who wants something like that to you know come in intrude upon your life but you know you're dealt a certain deck of cards you have to deal with it which quite honestly when you come out on the other side of it will make you a stronger person anyway but you know i think that's the biggest problem that i see from students is trying to push themselves too hard to get everything done or to pretend like everything's fine and from what we've heard from doctors that actually makes a concussion last longer so it's really about you know giving yourself time to rest you know if you broke your arm and you said not this arms are broken i'm just going to keep using it i'm gonna keep pitching i'm gonna keep catching a low cross ball or whatever it is you do that injury is probably going to not heal as quickly as it could if you just kind of relax that's crazy so you've been here first started it was sort of like a going on the fly let's see if this can work for most situations and you know i was just doing little tweaks but i think now it does but like i just said it works in most situations not all and so you can follow the p only as a barebones way to sort of deal with a concussion but again it's very very individualized and i think that's what it's really about is sort of keeping an eye on that particular student and doing what they need in order to get back on their feet  be healthy it's not always the same every time so you do your mom as well and does counsellor if your child has was to ever get concussed playing sports or anything would you consider just pulling them out and letting the rest of entire week or would you let them you know go at their own pace i think that actors mainly suggest going your own pace and they sort of give you like an outline it used to be that you know they wanted you to sit in a black room and not talk remove or do anything and i think that was reflective also of the doctors you know figuring out what exactly this concussion thing was and how bad it was so as they've gone through and learned i think that they sort of take a step back from hey you're on total quarantine to let's try to get you to do a b and c and then if we see improvement maybe you take on you know a couple other things as well so i assume at some point my son will get a concussion he's kind of a wild one five right now but i just assume it's going to happen i probably just  getting we'll be right back with the second half and thank you so much doesn't but yes they do with the g p a they do look at center i sat score i mean it just is what it is but you know it's trying to tell kids it's a human looking through your application it's not a robot it's not a you  know a computer i know it feels very impersonal because you're handing this thing and you don't know who's looking at you don't know what's going to happen after that so it does feel very like you're being judged and it's just very black and white but i found it really isn't i always tell students especially if you have multiple concussions there is usually a place that you get to put in like a personal statement on the application this is where you write down hey i was concussed or my junior year i was also concussed during my sophomore year or whatever the case may be let them know that you know your academic performance was affected by the fact that you had this unavoidable situation it was medical not like you wanted it to happen so you know you write that right on there that human being on the other end of that application who's reading that is going to take that into account and so they're not just going to you know see maybe a slightly lower g p a or oh you ended up with you know a lower grade in this class or whatever they know that maybe you weren't able to put forward your best foot and so they're going to take that into consideration remember too like i said previously when you have a concussion and you have to work through that it's difficult it's not a fun thing to have to go through so i feel like if you can harness that as a way to say like look i was given this really bad set of circumstances and i didn't want to put that fell into my lap but i made the best of it i moved through this i didn't collapse under the weight of it and i'm ok now i'm on the other side i think it shows grit and colleges love that in college to drop out is after fresh me or during freshman year when they're taking you on to their campus they're really really hoping you're not going to do that and they're making a bet on you essentially that you're not going to drop out after freshman year if you show that you can make it through a difficult situation and not just quit or just totally fall apart that's going to be a really good indicator that you're probably gonna make it her freshman year so i feel like there be more willing to give a chance to student who's kind of shown that hey i can make it through some difficult circumstances land on my feet and they would maybe somebody who's been totally untested so the scene this proves that in cush and knows how to deal with that type of stuff in this how to get through the hard stuff compared to sins has had like a four point necessarily have to be the concussion thing that you work your way through i think it's highlighting your struggles i think it's you know finding that thing that you know this was hard for me and i didn't like it and i really wanted to run from it but i didn't and whatever that is for you that's something that you know you need to highlight that's a good thing not highly so that's really something important to put in your color just there even your this is called your yeah the application yeah yeah that's really that's exactly it if you yeah if if that's something that they're asking for when they're asking for maybe an essay or you know which is something that you want to highlight because you feel like this is going to reflect upon your personality that's a great angle to take for sure so how would a student go about but you know you want to fine tune it a little bit but in the personal statements really the best place to do that because they ask either for a personal statement or sometimes i'll ask for flat out is there anything we should know about your transcript before we process application and so that even to write a couple sentences you don't have to go way into it or anything else you can just put you know hey i was concussed during whatever year it's slightly affected my grades however you know i've moved on from that or you know if they do ask for a prompt and an essay something about like describe a time that you counter the hardship any move beyond it if you feel strong enough writing a whole essay about that you could totally use that for an essay like that be in this little as you go off of  jackley how do you encourage your students the you know your guidance counselor for how do you encourage them to you know six through and just you know try your hardest for all classes and such but like i said lee i think it's more about telling a student's a slow down i think that's the more difficult conversation that i sometimes have to have is the i know you can do it but maybe you shouldn't right now and that's difficult for anybody to hear because again they don't want to be slowed down by this they want to always be doing their best it's hard to tell somebody that hey you're working too hard those people are usually very driven they are used to getting good results from that drive and it's hard to accept that maybe you do need to take a breather i think though once they realize that you can get better by taking a break a little bit faster or that things will actually you know work themselves out easier and a little bit quicker if you just give yourself some time that usually is the turning point of our station but you know sometimes you have to have a conversation more than once it's something that it's hard to accept and i get that sometimes silly gotta get in the oh yeah really i would say you know trying to figure out a balance between like athletics or any activity and school is hard you know you've got a lot of hours you put into practicing you've got a lot of hours that you put into games or  competitions or whatever it is so it's really a juggling act and that's just something that i think student athletes eventually learn how to control but sometimes i need help figuring out a schedule and i can help them with that when they're concussed it's like it adds a whole other layer to it hopefully they are not participating and sort of bored or anything like that but i think sometimes they'll actually go to practices and just kind of sit and watch occasionally if they're not got badly so  you know i think again it's about tempering your expectations of what you can expect from yourself after concussion about being realistic about you know again your time and just what is going to come out of that injured brain of yours at least for a little bit a schedule change them then on how long we think this thing is going to last or maybe how severe it is but that's a whole that's something that we usually will look at an individual basis and we always encourage students come down accounting office we have  as hyman at the front desk they have access to a schedule so though usually just schedule you in for a time that you're free and that we're free or quite honestly sometimes you know if you can't reach us right away it's super easy to e mail us and then we can even just get  to really quickly especially if it's an easy question to something bigger like what you're talking about like you know making a schedule change or figuring out you know hey when i'm going to do this this test in government or one of my going to do this test and you know geometry or whatever then that probably needs more time you need time to sit down with your counsellor and actually work this stuff out and plus you want to we we as counselors would like to check in with you and see how you doing because i can be emotionally traumatic too so i want to make sure that you're ok would say coming in making an appointment or even just e mailing us and saying hey i'd like to see you when you're free and it's like your whole world has completely flipped upside down whenever you're used to your normal routine and then you like wait my brain isn't working right now yeah it's something to concussions let's say resulting now into traumatic brain injury where you're going to have lasting effects that are probably going to be there for quite a while and that would be diagnose from the concussion doctor it's especially common in people who have been concussed very badly or have been concussed multiple times don't worry think you're ok if that were the case sometimes the doctor will come back with hey we need a schedule where the student needs a break between every class or you know maybe we need a schedule that the core classes are in the morning because they feel the best then maybe we need some things in the afternoon that are a little bit lighter or vice versa sometimes we even have students that come in for the morning part of the day and they leave for the afternoon to go home get some rest and then they flip flop so the next day they stay home in the morning they come for the afternoon classes so it really it just depends i know for me personally i would go to my core classes and then whatever one i would have the hardest time concentrating and i would just go to the nurse and then i would pick up the homework from the next day and then i would just do that until life got better and following a clip from my doctor up and that's what i mean when i say there's a framework for how to deal with it but you also can't determine how it's go play out one hundred percent so you kind of have to figure things out on the fly to a certain extent exactly so do you think how do you think nurse calls it help students with concussions because i know you guys sometimes coordinate oh yeah and how exactly does a protocol work like what exactly is the protocol so she like i said she receives usually all the doctors because she's a nurse she keeps everything there will keep copies for us down in our office but she's the main warehouse and she's the communicator with the teachers  so when she receives that note and she's going to like i said send it over to the grade level principal whichever one it is they're going to analyze it change language into the common language that we use here peters and then she  interacts with the teachers after that lets them know what's going on gives them updates eka thing she does a whole lot on the back side of things that nobody ever sees she really gets the brunt of the concussion like paperwork i would say she keeps track of those four week meetings like what we discussed what plans were going to make going forward or what changes we need to make she also will usually call the doctors offices and ask them for updated notes especially because you know sometimes we don't get expire she's the one to interact with the parents a whole lot like especially if the student is coming down a lot and needs time to be in a dark room should relay that information to both the parents and the doctor so she's like  the main hub i would say like the concussion communication piece of it and like i said the paperwork so she does a lot of stuff that you wouldn't believe like it just is going on and she makes it run very smoothly all sounds to me like