STE. GENEVIEVE – Ste. Genevieve County R-II School District announced Friday that Bloomsdale Elementary School is one of four schools that has been recognized as a 2022 recipient of the National Recognized Missouri Program Award (the NRM) by the Missouri School Counselor Association.
The school was also recognized with the Gysbers Missouri Comprehensive School Counseling Program Award.
The NRM recognizes Missouri building level school counseling programs that have demonstrated exemplary work in providing a fully implemented school counseling program that is data-driven and based upon the Missouri Comprehensive School Counseling Program. Recipients of the NRM are eligible for recognition by the American School Counselor Association and its RAMP Award (Recognized ASCA Program), which bestows these schools national recognition.
The NRM process takes more than a year to be ready for a school to submit its documentation. The school counseling program is evaluated and analyzed in great detail, collecting and reporting on data that supports excellence in school counseling services.
The newest recipients of the NRM are:
Bloomsdale Elementary School, Bloomsdale, Mo.; school counselor: Amy Rowland
Blair Oaks Middle School, Jefferson City, Mo.; school counselor: Maria Stokes
Hawthorn Elementary School, Kansas City, Mo.; school counselor: Bianca Mayfield-Miller and
John Thomas School of Discovery, Nixa, Mo.; school counselor: Tyne Burns.
The schools and their counselors were honored at the Professional Recognition Ceremony at the state Capitol on Dec. 3, and they received both the NRM Award and the Gysbers Missouri Comprehensive School Counseling Program Award. This award is named after Dr. Norm Gysbers, a founder of modern school counseling, responsible for shifts from guidance counseling to school counseling. Dr. Gysbers spent his year at the University of Missouri – Columbia. Counseling programs across the globe have utilized his format in schools.
Bloomsdale Elementary is one of 12 schools in the state of Missouri to receive both honors, and is the first school in Southeast Missouri to receive these honors. Bloomsdale Elementary will hold these titles for the next five years.
The NRM was awarded to Bloomsdale Elementary to recognize 17 different areas in which the school counseling program is a model program. One of these components was an advisory council with ongoing input from various stakeholders to help guide decisions within the school’s counselor program.
Members include administrators, parents, Board of Education members, and teachers who help guide the process. Some other areas recognized were the school’s commitment to teaching social-emotional learning, the integration of family involvement schoolwide, the level of collaboration and intentionally built into the school’s RTI (Response to Intervention) and Care Team, the level of community support and partnerships, and work with bullying prevention.
“We are so excited to share this news with our families and our community,” Superintendent Dr. Julie Flieg said. “We would like to thank Counselor Amy Rowland, as well as the Counseling Advisory Council and all of those who assist in the Counseling Program at Bloomsdale Elementary, for their hard work and all that they do to assist our students, parents, teachers, and community members. We are incredibly proud of Mrs. Rowland for the hard work and dedication she infused into this project over the span of the last few years.”
Counselor Amy Rowland began the process for the NRM Award three years ago, and has thanked the following for their support, assistance, feedback and encouragement throughout this process: the Counseling Advisory Council, Bloomsdale Elementary students, faculty and staff, building and district administration, and her family.
“Our motto is DRAGONS: Family. Tradition. Excellence., and their support is a shining example of how we live our motto in our district,” Mrs. Rowland said. “I understand that this achievement may gain notice of neighboring schools and counselors, and I am hopeful that this will help my fellow counselors in our area advocate for this type of counseling programming in their schools. I also knew that I would gain valuable mentorship through this process and grow as a counselor. This was a hard process for me. But if we are brave enough to listen to our intuition and not run when things get hard, amazing things can happen. I have grown in countless ways over the last three years and I am grateful for this growth.”
