VALDOSTA – Lowndes County Schools hosted “School Counselors Are Better Together,” mini conference recently at Wiregrass Georgia Technical College for school counselors in the area.

Approximately 80 counselors attended the professional development opportunity. They traveled from Ben Hill, Berrien, Calhoun, Clay, Colquitt, Cook, Decatur, Dougherty, Early, Grady, Irwin, Lee, Lowndes, Miller, Mitchell, Randolph, Seminole, Sumter, Terrell, Thomas, Tift and Worth counties and Valdosta school systems, which make up Georgia School Counselor Association Region 6, school officials said in a statement.

“School Counselors Are Better Together,” was sponsored by the Georgia School Counselor Association and organized by Quita Jones, the Region 6 liaison and school counselor at Lowndes Middle School.

The event is an annual free professional development conference organized by the current region liaison. Due to COVID, the last professional in-person meeting for Region 6 was in March 2020 at Moultrie Technical College. The sessions presented are counseling topics that are relevant to the schools’ counseling programs.

Lakisha Barnum, counselor at Moulton-Branch Elementary School, Ryan Dixon, counselor at Pine Grove Middle School, and Danita Boyd, counselor at Pinevale Elementary School, served as session leaders presenting on integrating social-emotional learning in the classroom, using data for student success, and using restorative practices in group counseling respectively, school officials said.

Counselors also had opportunities to network and share some of their counseling program ideas and best practices.