If somebody else could do exactly what you're doing after reading the same slide deck-

Why did you go to grad school? 

That's the question that hit me after I reviewed a state-sponsored training that handed school counselors a watered-down counseling model and called it evidence-based. 

And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. 

But this episode isn't really about one training. 

It's about what happens when a profession starts confusing the appearance of counseling with counseling itself: the slides that look clinical, the activities that look like interventions, the worksheets that look like the real thing. 

I'll give you one simple question to tell the difference.  

And fair warning- a lot of your favorite materials won't survive it.

[Part 1 of 2. This week, the rule. Next week, the test.]

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Topics: solution-focused brief counseling (SFBC) in schools, evidence-based school counseling, treatment fidelity, the limits of printable counseling resources and TPT materials, and protecting the clinical role of the school counselor.

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All names, stories, and case studies in this episode are fictionalized composites drawn from real-world circumstances. Any resemblance to actual students, families, or school personnel is coincidental. Details have been altered to protect privacy.

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This work is part of the School for School Counselors body of work developed by Steph Johnson, LPC, CSC, which centers role authority over role drift, consultative practice over fix-it culture, adult-designed systems and environments as primary drivers of student behavior, clinical judgment over compliance, and school counselor identity as leadership within complex systems.