Middle School Guidance Counselor

She liked being a teacher but decided to change her career to help students in a different way. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

LF is the youngest of five children, growing up within an ‘extended’ African-American family consisting of – in addition to her parents – aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews. 

Being surrounded by lots of kids at an early age would prove helpful for her eventual career choice – unknown at the time. 

CHILDHOOD INTERESTS

LF recalls no interest in a specific adult job while she was a student in elementary and middle school. But she enjoyed her school classes and appreciated the difference between good, mediocre, and bad teachers. “If I decide to be a teacher,” said LF quietly to herself, “I would want to be one of the good ones.”

EDUCATION

Following her high school graduation, LF was accepted to several colleges. She made her choice of where to enroll, based on a combination of factors: 

• overall cost, 
• availability of courses toward being a licensed teacher, 
• reputation of the college including success of recent graduates obtaining teaching jobs
• proximity to home to avoid time-consuming and expensive travel plus the opportunity to stay in touch with her extended family. 

LF’s education program included student teaching on a rotating basis for all grade levels, ranging from elementary to middle to high school classes. She realized that she most enjoyed working with children within the primary grades (first through third), which would guide her employment applications. 

FIRST CAREER – TEACHING

LF was fortunate to be hired within a school district close to her hometown. Even better, she was assigned to teach first grade. “I loved it,” declared LF, who planned to “stay in teaching forever.”

CAREER CHANGE REASON

The school principal routinely visited all the elementary school classrooms for several reasons including letting all students see that the administrators were also people who cared about them. But most important, one of the principal’s responsibilities is to monitor classrooms for an overall sense of how the teacher was interacting with the students and able to carry out the overall lesson plans of that grade. 

During the several years that LF was occasionally observed by the principal in the classroom plus how she handled herself in faculty meetings and with parents during “Back to School” events, the principal began to realize that LF’s personality would also be a good fit as a school counselor, who helps students with their academics and (in high school) with career and college readiness, as well as with their social and emotional well-being. Counselor’s roles took on extra responsibilities during and after the covid pandemic, as some students struggled to adjust to changes. 

Based on his several years interacting with LF as a teacher, the school principal asked LF to switch from teaching to counseling, which would require further formal education toward a Master’s degree in counseling. 

CHALLENGE – ADDITIONAL FORMAL EDUCATION REQUIRED

Editor – Most state education laws require that full-time counselors earn a Master’s degree in counseling. These advanced degree classes may be scheduled on a part-time (evenings, weekends and/or summers) or a full-time basis. Some school districts will provide some funding toward the related expense. Most school districts will provide increased income to a teacher with advanced degrees such as a Master’s or a Doctorate. 

LF had talked to some school counselors about the positives and negatives within that career. She had also talked to some of her students about their experiences with the school counselors. She believed that she could learn how to be an effective counselor. 

“I was good at teaching,” LF said to her family and to the school principal, “But I feel like I could have much more of an impact with students in the smaller counseling setting.”

After talking it over with her husband, LF decided that transitioning from teaching to counseling could be well timed to coincide with her upcoming maternity leave, thus balancing being a new mom while attending her Master’s classes in counseling – initially spending more time with her newborn, gradually able to increase her academic commitment as her child became less dependent on LF. 

TYPICAL COUNSELING ACTIVITIES

On a typical day as a counselor, LF will first log onto her computer and begin scrolling through a list of more than 300 student names, meticulously checking the roster to pack in as many appointments as possible with her ambitious goal: to make contact with every sixth-grade student at the middle school by the end of the school year. 

Editor – Remember at the outset of this story the prediction that being surrounded daily during childhood by an extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews might be a good experience for an eventual career counseling 300 children in just one of the three grades of a middle school.

“Middle school is really stressful,” notes LF. A steady stream of students often visits with her, without advance appointments. With their permission, she checks their grades on the computer, asking about academics, time management and lunch partners – an important time in middle school. 

“Where are your glasses? Can you see?” she asked an 11-year-old who showed up without his spectacles. 

“Are you spending your whole life studying?” she asked a straight-A student. 

The walls of LF’s office are pasted with positive messages: “You are more amazing than you realize” and “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re still learning.”

LF is just “Mrs. F” to students, who say they enjoy their visits with her. They can email her to schedule time to discuss any concerns at home or school. LF calls parents to give praise reports, too, not just to handle problems. 

“She’s really honest with me,” said one student. “I can tell her stuff and she won’t judge me for it.”

CAREER SATISFACTION

LF is naturally a caring person but she honed her skills as a counselor while studying her new profession during her Master’s classes in counseling plus being mentored by experienced counselors and occasionally finding inspiration from deep thinkers such as author Maya Angelou, who wrote: 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

LF says she gets attached to her students and is “110% sure that I will stay in counseling until I retire. I just feel really close to (the students). Sometimes when they leave, I want to say, “Bye. Love you.’ “

A former counselor intern, now a mental health counselor at the middle school, has said about LF: “She works so well with the students. She gives them exactly what they need. She’s awesome.”

The acting Superintendent of LF’s school district has said “She is a gift to us as a district. She is also, more importantly, a gift to the students, and that’s what we appreciate and love about her the most.”

This career story is based on an article by Melanie Burney, published within the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper on 2/22/23.