Features
Counseling on a daily basis
Guidance counselor Linda Hart helps students with scheduling, checking credits and college among other duties on a daily basis.
Hart says that she can get as many as 130 emails a day that she has to respond to.
“I see anywhere between 8-25 students (daily),” Hart said.
Hart has loads of paperwork to do as well as computer work. With all that she says that she’s a little more disorganized than she wants to be.
“I’m always reacting to someone else so I can’t be as organized as I want to be,” Hart said.
Senior Nick Ahrens has benefited from the work counselors do and says that the counselors help people with college and schedules. This helps Ahrens in a big way.
“I have someone to go to if I have questions,” Ahrens said.
Ahrens has only been to the counselor once this year because of scheduling but he still thinks they do a fine job.
With only three counselors for around 1100 students, there are other students who don’t agree with Ahrens. Sophomore LeAndre Lee for example says that the counselors do a bad job and don’t help much.
“They barley do anything, they go to meetings and don’t help us,” Lee said.
Lee has been to the counselor twice for schedule changes, but he still doesn’t like them. Lee thinks that the counselors should be more open than what they are now.
“The counselors need to be more open to our personal life,” Lee said.
The one time that Lee went to see his counselor he got his schedule changed and was talking about other issues that he was going through. Lee said that the counselor only cared about his schedule and didn’t even ask what was wrong.
As a result of this experience Lee came to the assumption that counselors only care about scheduling.
“They don’t care about our personal life. They don’t even talk to us in the hall way or anything,” Lee said.
Hart says that she basically listens to students and gives feedback if she can. Hart also says that she makes referrals to other places if the student needs it.
“People get frustrated all the time with the current system,” Hart said
Kira Herron photo