Building Free Tools for Counselors: A Blog Update
Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t posted here in about a month. I started this blog with a simple goal: to offer practical, realistic support for counselors doing college advising alongside everything else their jobs demand. That part hasn’t changed.
What has changed is how this work is taking shape, based largely on feedback from counselors and where I’ve found myself spending more time lately. The mission is the same, but the approach looks a little different.
Over the past several months, writing these posts, talking with counselors in different settings, and working directly with schools made something clear. Most of the challenges counselors face aren’t about effort or knowledge. They’re about systems that make good work harder than it needs to be. School information isn’t always clear or consistent, important context gets lost, and counselors often end up rebuilding the same materials again and again.
New free counselor tools
As this series developed, two projects began to grow alongside it.
SCOFile is a free, digital school profile that helps high schools clearly explain grading practices, academic rigor, and school context to colleges. The goal is to make it easier for schools to share information they already have, and easier for colleges to understand a student’s academic environment without guesswork. You can learn more at scofile.com.
CCStacks is a growing library of free counselor resources. It’s a place to collect and share templates, checklists, and tools that counselors can actually use and adapt, rather than recreate from scratch. Many of these resources grew out of ideas first explored in this blog, and I’ll continue adding to the library gradually over time. You can find them at ccstacks.org. It’s early, and there are only a few resources there now, but it will continue to grow.
Both projects came out of the same questions I kept running into while writing:
How can we make common tasks easier?
How can we reduce duplication of effort?
How can small, practical tools support better work day to day?
That’s the work I’m most excited to keep building right now.
About the blog
I plan to keep writing here, but I’m shifting to a monthly posting cadence so I can give proper attention to both my counseling work and these projects.
Some posts will share lessons from building and testing tools. Others will reflect on patterns I’m seeing across schools and states, or changes in college admissions that feel worth thinking through. The goal isn’t volume. It’s usefulness.
Tools and resources going forward
If you’ve found this blog helpful and want to see what’s next:
SCOFile continues to grow as a free, digital way for high schools to share clear, consistent school information with colleges. I’m genuinely excited about its potential to help counselors and students across many different contexts. More to come at scofile.com.
CCStacks is just getting started and will continue to grow into a practical, no-frills resource library for counselors.
As always, questions, ideas, and feedback are welcome.
This blog is part of a larger effort to support counselors through the real work of college advising. If you have topic requests, questions, or resources you’d like to share, feel free to reach out anytime at jeremy@higheredification.org or jeremy@scofile.com.