School Counseling

Welcome! 

My name is Katie Staley and I am the school counselor at Western Elementary school. My role is to support ALL students in the areas of social emotional learning, academics, and career exploration. I provide social emotional learning through evidence-based classroom lessons as well as small group and individual counseling. I support our teachers in the implementation of RULER, our district-wide social emotional learning curriculum.

My goal is to support all learners by partnering with parents and families to make our Western students' experience as positive and valuable as possible! Please feel free to reach out to me via phone, email, or parentsquare with any questions or concerns.

Here is some information about our district-wide RULER curriculum and social emotional learning:

Recognizing emotions in self and others

Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions

Labeling emotions accurately

Expressing emotions appropriately

Regulating emotions effectively

RULER is a systemic approach to SEL developed at the Center for Emotional Intelligence. RULER aims to infuse the principles of emotional intelligence into the immune system of pre-K to 12 schools, informing how leaders lead, teachers teach, students learn, and families support students.

Research shows that students who receive social emotional learning interventions perform better academically, improve in classroom behavior, develop more positive attitudes about themselves and others, and have better mental health outcomes than students who do not receive these interventions (https://kappanonline.org).

Students who participate in school-based programs focused on social and emotional learned show:

• 9% improvement in prosocial behavior
• 9% improvement in attitudes about self, others and school
• 9% reduction in problem behaviors
• 10% reduction in emotional distress
• 11% increase in standardized achievement test scores
• 23% increase in social and emotional skills