Everyone here at MHS has a counselor. But what can your counselor do for you?

If you’re having issues communicating with your teacher or your grades are dropping drastically, your counselor can help you with that. They can adjust classes so that you can be comfortable, but still challenged, and work to get graduation requirements and classes that prep you for your future career.

“We’re here to support students,” Anthony Elliott said. “If they’re struggling in school, we help them communicate with their teachers.”

“The bottom line is to get [the student] to graduate,” Maura Brady-McMullen adds. “But also, academically, [we want to] try to figure out how to help them challenge themselves.” 

Your counselor can also assist you in choosing your career and figuring out what your interests are. 

“Think about what you want to do as a career, and [we’ll help you find] some classes that would prep you,” said Brady-McMullen.

All of the counselors here at Mead love their job and always try to do their best. Brady-McMullen said, “I really like working with people.” When asked why she wanted to go into this profession, she added, “I felt like working with younger adults would be… really fulfilling.”

But despite loving their job so much, all three MHS counselors agreed that there are many difficult parts to being a school counselor. “[One difficult thing is] the demands put on our job by administration and the school district,” said  Elliott. “Different responsibilities take us away from meeting with students.”

“If we had it our way, we would spend all our time with students,” he added.

Another challenging thing for counselors is having to deal with angry or demanding parents. Most times, parents are kind and polite to their child’s counselor. But there have been many interactions that aren’t so kind and polite.

However, even with the hard and stressful parts, all of our counselors love and appreciate their job.

“Listening to everything a student has to say because you never know what’s going to walk through the door, is probably the most exciting part,” said Courtney Howe.

Being a school counselor isn’t easy, but we have some pretty great ones here at Mead. 

So if you need someone to talk to, are having issues with a friend, or don’t know how to identify your interests, your counselor is always there to help you. They are here to support you and talk to you.