Near the bottom of the daily announcements, observant students may have noticed the list of counselors and the letters of the alphabet they’re responsible for.
In previous years, counselors all had certain specialties, or domains. There were counselors for freshman, sophomores and juniors, so students would switch to a new one each year.
This year, the counseling system is different. Now, each student is assigned one counselor based on the first letter of their last name. However, the letters couldn’t just be distributed evenly between counselors, since some letters are more common than others as the start of a surname.
“That’s why there wasn’t just a clear-cut way to pick; it couldn’t just be A, B and C or whatever that looks like,” Reyes said. “We wanted to be able to have our numbers be a bit lower, so we could engage with students better, work with students on a more consistent basis and not feel, for lack of a better term, overwhelmed.”
Looking at past and future enrollment, a system was devised in order to make sure counselors have a roughly even number of students over time. This allows the counselors to spend more time with students and give them accurate advice. For example, a common issue is balancing class schedules so they are just difficult enough, but not stressful.
“They might be looking to pick a certain class, and we might say, ‘Hey, I think you need to challenge yourself a little bit more,’ from me getting to know you and seeing how you do academically,” Reyes said.
There are still go-to counselors for certain topics–Ms. Bobbi Lawhorn is still the military liaison, for instance. On the whole, though, the new format requires counselors to branch out, since they will be advising all manner of kids, rather than just focusing on their specialty.
“Now, with this format that we have, we’re all kind of a jack-of-all-trades. Now we’re all taking on the post-secondary aspect of things,” Reyes said. “It’s been a learning process, but it’s been good.”
It’s impossible to determine how long this system will remain in place. Changes might also become necessary to make sure the workload of each counselor remains roughly equal. However, Reyes is optimistic.
“I’m hopeful, as of right now,” Reyes said. “It seems to be pretty awesome.”
