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Home > Flashlight Award
The Flashlight Award
The Flashlight Approach was created by Trish Hatch, PhD, Director of the Center for Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership (CESCaL) at San Diego State University. If you have any questions regarding the application process, contact Danielle Duarte at admin@cescal.org.
What is the Flashlight Award and why would we apply for one?
Have you already completed a SPARC? Are you ready to take on another opportunity to share the results of your school counseling program? Then Flashlight may be for you. The Flashlight is another step you can take to show how you are implementing the ASCA National Standards and The ASCA National Model.
The Flashlight "Pilot" Award will be given to ten school counseling and student support programs that submit a SPARC in 2009 and follow the steps to creating a Flashlight PowerPoint using the Flashlight Approach. The Flashlight Approach is a way to begin to measure and share the results of a program activity to share with staff and stakeholders. Rather than measure the impact of every activity, school counselors are encouraged to focus on providing one thing well. In doing so, they shine a light (much like a flashlight does) on one activity they implement. It is suggested that each year school counseling teams create PowerPoint Presentations of their "Flashlight Approaches" and share them with faculty and school board members. Following each presentation, counselors are encouraged to engage in collegial conversations about "what worked", "what didn't" and how they plan to improve their activity the next time.
The SPARC offers school counselors an opportunity to present the comprehensive school counseling program. The Flashlight focuses on presenting the results of just one activity. The Flashlight allows the school counseling team to collect data and share results of one activity in depth. In summary, the SPARC offers an opportunity to share comprehensive information regarding the school counseling and student support programs and activities; the Flashlight Approach encourages school counselors to fully design, implement and evaluate one guidance curriculum and/or one intentional guidance activity. School counselors do this through a seven step process.
- Create Action Plan (Guidance Curriculum and/or Intentional Guidance: Closing the Gap)
- Create a Lesson Plan (much like a teacher lesson plan)
- Crosswalk (align) lessons to the ASCA National Standards
- Create Lesson Materials (PowerPoint's, Handouts) etc.
- Create Pre-Post Tests that measure Attitudes, Knowledge and Skills (ASK)
- Measure results of activity/intervention
- Create School Counselor Flashlight© PowerPoint Presentations to share your results with faculty, staff, administrators and other stakeholders
- Submit a narrative of your experience (optional)
The SPARC and Flashlight are aligned in many ways:
- Both focus on collecting and sharing student results
- Both call for collecting process, perception and results data
- Both are continuous improvement process activities/documents
- Both are designed to assist school counseling in being more accountable
- Both are self evaluation tools
- Both promote the school counseling program
- Both provide another resource for preparing school accreditation reports and data for grants.
- Both provide an avenue for implementing the ASCA National Standards and the ASCA National Model for School Counseling Programs
- Both strengthen the link between research and practice in student support and help link SPARC with a process of reflection and action to strengthen practice.
- Both are designed for program improvement
- Both are designed to share with faculty and school boards
School Counselors throughout the state are implementing the ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs (ASCA, 2005), which calls for school counselors to design Guidance Curriculum and Intentional Guidance (Closing the Gap) Action Plans. Often referred to as a two pronged approach, these action plans ensure every students receives guidance curriculum and students who are at-risk receive additional intervention.
What is a Guidance Curriculum Action Plan?
The theme behind Guidance Curriculum is: " Every Student Gets Every Thing".
The first prong of the two pronged approach is guidance curriculum. By virtue of breathing, every student in the school receives guidance curriculum. Developmental in design, preventative in nature and comprehensive in scope, parents, students, teachers and other stakeholders know exactly what guidance curriculum their student will receive. The curriculum, much like math or science, is standards driven; created by counselors to address the standards and competencies of the ASCA National Standards (Campbell & Dahir, 1997). School counselors determine what content will be covered in each lesson and crosswalk it with the standards. Ideally, these classroom guidance lessons are designed by counselors in districts and become consistent school-to-school so that when students transfer within a district they know what curriculum their child will receive from the school counseling program. For example: just as all third graders are taught multiplication tables, so too are all 6 th graders taught "A Time to Tell" violence prevention guidance lesson. School counselors seeking the Flashlight Award are encouraged to measure the impact of teaching guidance lessons to a grade level of students in their school.
What is Intentional Guidance?
The theme behind Intentional Guidance (Closing the Gap) is: "Some Kids Need More "
The second prong of the two-pronged approach in developing Action Plans is Intentional Guidance. While guidance curriculum may be enough for most students, the intentional guidance philosophy is that "some kids need more ". Intentional guidance can be directed toward students or systems. When directed towards students, school counselors design data driven (as opposed to standards driven) activities each year. After analyzing the data (attendance, behavior or achievement) school counselors determine which students need additional support. For example: students in 9 th grade with two F's or more on first quarter grade reports, students in 4 th and 5 th grade with U's in citizenship or study habits, 7 th grade students with 10 or more absences in the first quarter, and student with five or more days of suspension. The data tells us these students need additional assistance. Rather than wait for students to be referred, school counselors pro-act by querying the student database systems to identify the target group and provide intentional guidance activities designed to address specific data driven student needs. School counselors collect process, perception and results data before, during and after their intervention activity to show the impact of their interventions.
Intentional guidance (Closing the Gap) can also be directed toward systemic change. When looking at the data, the school counselor may realize the "more" students need is not a school counseling activity (such as group counseling, individual counseling, a referral to tutoring etc.) but rather the counselor's advocacy to work within the system to change an existing policy or practice that may be denying some students access and equity to rigorous educational opportunities. These may include social justice issues, parity issues, or issues that stir a moral imperative for counselors to act on students' behalf. An example might be advocating for changes in the curriculum guide when counselors recognize (using data) that prerequisite requirements are holding students back, rather that moving them forward to more rigorous education. The work of the Education Trust Met Life Foundation Transforming School Counseling Initiative aligns directly with this type of Intentional guidance ("Closing the Gap") activity.
How do I create a Flashlight PowerPoint?
To create a Flashlight PowerPoint using the Flashlight Approach, school counselors create an action plan collect process data (who, what, and when data), perception data (student attitudes, skills, and knowledge) and results data (student achievement-related and achievement data). If you'd like to create your own Flashlight PowerPoint, follow this basic flashlight format:
- Take one school counseling activity and present the following as though you are telling a story.
- Start by indicating the standards this activity addressed, then share process data (explain what you did and when, where, and how often the activity was performed).
- Then add your pre-post perception data (measuring attitude, knowledge & skills), and the results data (the behavior change you intended to get in attendance, behavior or achievement).
Next, share any limitations of results followed by implications for how to improve the activity next time and a thank you to the staff for their support of the school counseling program.
What is the benefit of doing a Flashlight?
The Flashlight Approach is a way to immediately begin to show results of your program using key concepts in the ASCA National Model even if you are just beginning to understand it. Some school counselors may believe they need to finish each component of the model before moving forward. For example, they may want to take the first year to determine which standards to address, or write their entire curriculum and then connect it to standards, all before collecting impact data on their programs or activities. When counselors do this, they may be forced to wait years to have results to share with stakeholders. Professional school counselors simply can't wait any longer to gather data to show their programs are contributing in a meaningful way to student success. Instead of taking the first year in your program to align all lessons to standards, and then waiting until the following year to collect results of your program, it is suggested counselors choose ONE THING they want to measure and do I well. Then add more as time and staffing allows.
By selecting only ONE lesson or activity school counselors can measure something that they either already do, or would like to do. Then, using the flashlight approach, follow the following steps: identify the standards, activity, process, perception and results data and implications - just as presented in the examples on the www.CESCaL.org website. It's important when counselors are learning to collect and use data to share programs success that they do not try to measure everything, because they'll lose their mind, and we can't have that - as counselors are supposed to be some of the sanest people in school J . So start with measuring ONE thing well and focus on improving your programs one Flashlight at a time. Soon, all your Flashlights will shine like a large beam of light showcasing the benefits of your school counseling program.
Flashlight "Pilot" Award Requirements
- You must inform us that you plan to participate in the Pilot program by January 15, 2008 so that we can assist you in the process.
- The first 10 schools to submit will be assisted through this process during the pilot year.
- Submit a SPARC that meets all the requirements for award consideration. The SPARC must be received by the Los Angeles County Office of Education by 5:00pm on March 2, 2009.
- You must upload all 7 Flashlight FINAL Steps to the CESCaL Website at www.cescal.org by 5:00pm on March 2, 2009. We recommend you begin early as you may need feedback. Waiting until the last day may not provide you time to complete the process. The eight steps include:
- Action Plan (Guidance Curriculum and/or Intentional Guidance
- Lesson Plan
- Crosswalk aligning lessons to ASCA National Standards
- Lesson Materials (PowerPoint and/or Handouts)
- Pre-Post Test that measures attitudes, knowledge, and skills
- Results Report
- School Counselor Flashlight © PowerPoint Presentation
- E-mail a completed Rubric with your school name and contact person to admin@cescal.org
- To receive a Flashlight Award, each area of the Flashlight PowerPoint rubric must score "Yes" indicating expectations have been met for that flashlight step. Therefore, it would be to your benefit that you communicate with us frequently to ensure you have questions answered.
- You will be notified by email by March 23, 2009, as to the status of your Flashlight submission. Awards will be acknowledged at the SPARC Academy Award ceremonies.
Creating Your Flashlight
The Center for Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership (CESCSaL) Website has all the information to guide you through completing your Flashlight.
- Visit www.cescal.org and sign up for a FREE membership login (link to sign up on the left hand side of homepage).
- Once you are a member and logged in, you are able to get directions for each step of the process, upload blank documents to use, and see examples.
- To find DIRECTIONS for each Flashlight step:
- Scroll to the 'ASCA Model' drop down menu. Select 'Flashlight Builder'.
- On the left hand side of the screen, the process for building a Flashlight is listed. Scroll down and click on each step to open a document with instructions.
- To UPLOAD your Flashlight Documents to the CESCaL Website for SUBMISSION:
- Scroll to the 'ASCA Model' drop down menu. Select 'Flashlight Builder'.
- Scroll down and click on 'CLICK HERE' to Start Building YOUR Flashlight.
- Name your Flashlight and write a brief description of the topic. Click 'Create Flashlight Group'. For example if your lesson is on Study Skills for 6 th Graders you cold enter it as "Study Skills"; or "6 th Grade Study Skills"
- Upload appropriate documents for each section by clicking 'Upload Doc'.
- You can also view instructions, download blank documents, and see examples for each section on this page (located on the left hand side of each step).
- To download BLANK DOCUMENTS:
- Once you have created a Flashlight Group (see above for instructions) your most recent Flashlight Document Group should open up every time you logon to the CESCaL Website.
- Click on 'Ad/View Docs' to open up your Flashlight Document Group.
- Blank documents for various steps can be downloaded by clicking on 'Blank Forms' on the left hand side of the screen.
- Instructions and Examples for each step are also available here.
- To view complete EXAMPLE FLASHLIGHTS:
- Scroll to the 'ASCA Model' drop down menu. Select 'Resource Finder'
- On the left hand side of the screen, click on 'Delivery System'. All approved documents that are components of the ASCA Delivery System are posted here.
- To view an entire Flashlight, scroll down to lessons that have a flashlight icon on the left hand side of the title and CLICK ON THE FLASHLIGHT ICON. A new page will open up with all seven component of the Flashlight. Feel free to use these resources when creating your own Flashlight.
- Disclaimer: you may find that some of the Flashlight PowerPoint's posted on the web-site do not meet all of the exact criteria required for the award as the development has been a work in progress. These early submission samples (while not all perfect) have been useful to counselors who are looking for examples.
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