My Journey as a School Counselor Using Wakelet

Dyann Wilson shares how she discovered Wakelet, and how she’s using it to stay connected with her community!

In the words of Coldplay, I am going to “Take you back to the start”.

My journey with Wakelet started the same day our district went virtual due to the COVID pandemic.  We were told it would only be a week, but we all quickly learned that this season would be a long one.  My twin sister, Amy Storer, who is pretty much a tech rockstar, was the biggest influence when it came  to integrating technology into my practice.  I called her and asked what was the fastest way to get resources out to the community, students, parents, and staff.  I did not know then, but that one word has changed my profession as a school counselor.  She said WAKELET! 

Once we started looking into Wakelet, we quickly realized that we needed a newsletter to communicate and share information with our community.  This is how our Stay Connected Wakelet was started.  The beautiful layout and user friendly features were what sold me.  My creative juices started to flow! 

Our students began to use Schoology for their work and I loved how the embedded Wakelet collections looked!  Our students needed dialogue and direction during this difficult time.  Because of this, we created a Teague Counseling Corner Wakelet collection. This collection was broken up into 5 spaces, Mindfulness Monday, Tuesday Tips from Your Counselors, What’s the Word Wednesday, THOUGHTful Thursdays, and Fun Friday with College and Career Readiness.  We always tried to link the themes each week with what school counselor lesson we were pushing out.  

Speaking of counselor lessons, this tool has been instrumental in helping us seamlessly add meaningful school counselor lessons for our students to use or lean on.  Here is one example of a school counselor lesson we introduced to our students about mental health.  Another amazing way to use this tool is for awareness months.  We truly enjoyed building Wakelet collections for Suicide Prevention Week, Bullying Awareness Month, and SEL Day,Wakelet has made it possible to quickly get timely and meaningul information out to our community when it was/is needed most.

One of my most favorite things to create within Wakelet are Calming Rooms.  Curating videos, messages, graphics, and more into one space for students to center and ground themselves can be life changing for some and change the trajectory of the path they are on.  Connecting with the students on emotional levels rather than the discipline side can have way more impact.  I love the three R’s and I believe the Calming Rooms created in Wakelet do just that! RECEIVE-REFLECT-RELEASE! Here is an example of a Calming Room created through Wakelet.  

It was because of this journey and learning how impactful technology integration can be that I found my true passion. I LOVE sharing and working alongside other school counselors in Texas and beyond. One of the most recent things I created was a Meet the School Counselor skeleton for others to use at their open house nights in person or virtual. This is a great way to share resources and information easily in this one stop shop. Please see my Wakelet profile for more ideas and inspiration on how to meaningfully reach your students and your community.  

Now the story of this journey wouldn’t be complete without mentioning #techCAREtwins. My twin sister, Amy Storer, has been instrumental in where my journey is right now.  Without her guidance and support I most definitely would not be where I am today.  It is because of her support and guidance that the creation of #techCAREtwins came to fruition.  Technology + Care is what we are all about! We would love to connect with you, your campus, and/or district! Please reach out for more information!