Jen Money-Brady, HOPE Director, knows from first-hand experience the beauty and trials of being a school counselor. Read her letter to fellow counselors about how instrumental their impact is to students of all abilities.
Dear School Counselors,
We celebrate your ability to create HOPE for students of all abilities during National School Counseling Week. You make something special each day for each student by being present. You balance the demands of scheduling, standards, classroom lessons while also knowing which student likes which fidgets the most. You wake up each morning ready to jump in to help whomever walks in your office door accepting them for who they are and often lifting them up to get to where they want to be. You listen to dreams and goals of many-just think of the thousands of goals you have helped someone achieve.
As I write that, I know many of you are thinking about that one student you just couldn’t quite help get the goal or the dream, but the beauty of our profession is that you were there for that student when they failed too. Learning to live through failure and loss is hard, but you are there to let a student vent, cry and stomp out their fears. School Counselors have a tough job: they can’t check off standards when they hug a student who has suffered a loss or log the professional development that occurs in consulting with a teacher about a student’s learning abilities. But, we do it each day in the hopes that each little moment that we jump into wholeheartedly as school counselors will once again create a path to a new dream or one more goal towards graduation and beyond. We adapt and move quickly on our feet while simultaneously thinking about the items that must be done in order for us to have those moments of interrupted time with a student in need.
I applaud each school counselor this week for being courageous, to experience emotions, dreams, loss and hope through the eyes of children each day. I am inspired by the brand new school counselors who have just enrolled in school counseling programs, because you are the future of our profession and you will impact so many beautiful lives. I am grateful for the school counselors before me who helped me find my own path to becoming a school counselor while also influencing thousands of lives. National School Counseling Week is a celebration of the work we do each day or hope to do one day, and a celebration of all the people who need our help, give us help or let us ask just one more favor to make a dream possible for another student. School Counseling rocks!
~Jen
Post written by: Jen Money-Brady, HOPE Director