Неделя признательности консультантам

This week, as we celebrate Counselor Appreciation Week, we take a moment to recognize the invaluable work school counselors do—both seen and unseen. To better understand their impact, we spoke with Pahoran Marquez, a school counselor at Provo High, about the daily realities of the profession. 

Later, I’ll share my own experience with a district counselor—someone who played a crucial role in salvaging my academic career. This piece, in some small way, serves as a thank-you to her and to counselors across our district.

So, what does a Counselor do?

I imagine that most students know their school counselors as the ones who help pick classes, navigate college applications, or sort through schedules when conflicts arise. But the true scope of their role stretches beyond the more visible tasks.

“We meet with the SPED coordinator and case managers to develop strategies for students with IEPs, and we collaborate with administrators to address 504 concerns,” Marquez shares. “Counselors partner with social workers to connect students and families with essential resources, particularly those facing critical needs. We also engage with key stakeholders outside of school, including the community council and local organizations, to create opportunities that help students thrive in all areas of development.”

As the old adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child. In the Counselor’s case, they create community: they organize and collaborate, in schools and across the city, between parents, social workers, community leaders– all to support our students as they find their feet. They are imperative, if rarely appreciated.

As one of the many red-faced students who had flunked courses and feared in desperation that I had ruined my academic career, I can attest to the power of a great counselor.

I was a Provo High student with a tough streak of failed courses in my junior year. I met with a now-retired counselor, her last name was Theobald. Admittedly, I don’t remember much. Theobald’s room had a scent of citrus; it cut through some of the more perfumed disinfectants popular in the main office. I was determined that my academic career was a dashed cause, that teachers would see my inadequate grades as an intentional slight on their honed courses rather than the aftermath of a short albeit acute period of personal life challenges. With cutting honesty yet a surprisingly deft bedside manner, Theobald showed me a way forward.

The morning after, my teachers visited with me after classes, reviewed action plans, assigned new work—it was challenging work—but I somehow graduated, barely.

Many years have passed and I have forgotten much, but I will never forget Theobald. I will never forget Theobald for giving me the roadmap, and will always feel gratitude for scaffolding the trickier bends and inclines of my academic journey.

I know that my experience—one which feels personal, visceral, self-actualizing—is, in fact, not so rare at all: the counselors in our schools commit to taking on the daily agonies of our youth, grappling with the seemingly overwhelming swarm of fanged and frightening challenges to sort them and find order in the midst. A counselor’s superpower is the ability to make the Herculean mess a set of manageable tasks, offering tools to tame our personal challenges, delivering the needed dose of prevention after pruning setbacks.

For students, the work of a counselor is often invisible until they need it most. And it’s this connection that draws dedicated counselors like Pahoran:

“This role is an opportunity to have meaningful, crucial conversations with my students. I love watching them grow, learn, and discover for themselves who they are and the potential they hold.”

I could quip that counselors are lifesavers, but that would make the challenging truth of their profession a glossy cliché; often, they coach our students on how to shake off fear over many sessions, mark their mistakes despite the discomforts of doing so, chart new courses through self-coaching—and, in turn, do the impossible—they help us defy past histories.

In short, our counselors arm our children with the greatest gift a school can offer our youth: they show them how to learn and grow.

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