Responsibilities

• Oversee new student and upcoming year class registration
• Manage Hope Scholarship requirements and recipients
• Fulfill student needs and assist in personal struggles

Details

• Marcie Comeau, guidance secretary
• Petty, Paula O’Shields, Sue Hutton, and Connie Patterson, counselors
  • O’Shields has last names A-D
  • Hutton has last names E-K
  • Petty has last names L-Ra
  • Patterson has last names Re-Z

“We make sure all the students are on the right track in terms of taking the right classes to get them to college,” Petty said.

Counselors consistently check on student progress throughout their four years of high school. They call students to the office if their grades drop and make sure the students are taking the right classes they need to fulfill the Hope Scholarship requirements.

Guidance makes sure that students at The Mill are always well taken care of. When a student has a personal problem, they sign slips of paper to meet with their guidance counselor that day or the next.

The year starts off for a counselor to meet new students and welcome them to Starr’s Mill. They begin by registering the students and finding their classes that they are interested in, whether it be Drawing with Todd Little, Animation with Patt Coleman, Writers Workshop with Justin Spencer or Adv. Literature Types/Composition with Jillian Bowen or Drama with David Klein.

Part of the counselor’s process for everyday functioning is to make a “to-do” and “to-see” list. Their one goal is to make sure the new students feel comfortable finding their way.

“Everyday before I arrive at school, I say a prayer that I will be there for students who need me,” Petty said.

A goal among all counselors is to be more helpful and to make time for each student. They seek out all the students to check their GPA, update their college411.com account and make sure they are registrated for next high school year.

“Counselors seem to be very caring people because we pour our own heart and soul into our jobs,” Petty said.

Students come to guidance to talk about recent events in their academic and personal lives. As students begin to talk about themselves and counselors get to know them, “ [we] counselors often have an emotional time because most of the time you cannot fix” the situations students go through, Petty said.

However, counselors often “have a heavy heart” and get to witness students who “act like they do not care about their future,” Petty said. “You want them to really try to get to the core of why they do not really care.”

Counselors are also able to get to know their students through emotion-heavy sessions and get to know why students are “more likely to care about what is going on at home than math,” Petty said.

Over the years, these guidance counselor’s have formed relationships with their students and each other.  Petty believes that  “Our staff is the best because the four of [them]are so close, [they] have all relied on each other for a long time and are like four sisters.”

The close-knit relationships of the guidance department appealed to some students at the Mill looking to find their “inner psychologist” as an intern. Interns assist in answering phone calls, transferring calls to the counselors, calling students to the office and talking to the awaiting students that are meeting to talk to guidance.

“It’s fun to see how everything works in guidance,” senior and guidance intern Taylor Nelson said.

As the school’s backbone to student life, “We put out a lot of fires, and multi-task so no two days are the same,” Petty said.