Students go to counseling on a daily basis for several things but for the most part. Students tend to visit counselors relating to needing advice or assistance, but some students wonder why their counselors chose advising as their career as it can be tough. Mrs. Carissa Michels said, “I’m a counselor because I like working with students but I have a passion for helping kids and helping them reach their full potential.”

Similar to what Michels said, Mr. Lee Kaiser said “I have a passion for helping students to focus on the positive and work towards their goals.” As you can tell, the counselors want to help and see their assigned students manage to succeed.

Mr. Peter Uncles said, “I have been working as a school counselor for almost 30 years but I’ve been working with teenagers for over 40 years, so I guess you can say working with teenagers has been my calling in life.” So each of the counselors enjoys helping students with a variety of issues.

Counselors do different kinds of work during the day, either helping students or talking to parents, or meetings, or even organizing events. Kaiser said, “I communicate and collaborate with students, parents, guardians, and staff.”

The counselors enjoy their jobs, some even have favorite or best parts. Michels said, “The best part of my job is getting to help the students here at Osbourn High School.” This is similar to what Kaiser said, “working with and helping students, developing relationships with students to help them,” Mrs. Paula Erickson, a staff member who works in the counseling department said she finds the best part of her job is when she is meeting with students and families.

Each of the counselors has different past experiences but to be a counselor you have to get a master’s degree in education. Kaiser said, “I was a 6th grade teacher for 7 years, an elementary school counselor for 23 years, and I have been a high school counselor for two years.” Interestingly, Uncles said, “Before I was a school counselor I was a church youth minister for about 15 years.”

Students are usually upset when they go to their counselors for mentoring and receiving help, each reason is usually different from one another and the counselors have to know how to be able to “tackle” every situation a student gives them. Kaiser said, “I listen to them, I support them, we brainstorm solutions, and provide resources.”

Michels said, “Depending on why they are upset, I wait a couple of minutes for them to calm down and then we discuss why they’re upset and what’s bothering them, and usually after a few minutes of talking they feel a little bit better so they can go back to class and focus on their school work.”

Students may have difficulties when trying to find out what they’ll do after high school whether it’s college, military, getting a method to obtain money, or something else which leads some to go to their counselors for help. There’s many different types of opportunities and occupations that may give former students a hard time when picking or figuring out what to do, Kaiser said “Well after high school you could get a job, go into the military, get an apprenticeship where you kinda get trained by somebody, or you could further your education but that could be 2 years, 4 years, but you don’t have to do those colleges in 2 to 4 years as you could take shorter or longer. we provide whole class lessons, help students develop capital academic career plans, and hold one one-on-one advisory meetings, and then we are always available to talk to students to identify their goals and how to achieve them.” Essentially, the counselors provide class lessons to teach or inform students about the several types of activities they can do for life or sometime after high school.

Overall, the counselors only want to help the students here at Osbourn, whether it is with emotional help or finding what they want to do after high school, they are always willing to give advice and help any student in need.