The 27J Hall Pass is your inside look at what’s happening in 27J Schools, brought to you by the students who are living it.
In our second episode of the 27J Hall Pass, co-hosts Elby and Ray sat down with Brighton High counselor, Jolene Shedeed. They talked about the work of school counselors and how they support students across 27J.
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Episode 2 Transcript
Elby: Hello 27J listeners. Welcome back to the 27J Hall Pass–your source for what’s happening in your neighborhood schools, from the students who are living it. For this episode Ray sat down one on one with a special guest. Ray, who did you talk to this week?
Ray: Elby, I got a chance to talk with Jolene Shedeed. Jolene is a long term school counselor in 27J, and she’s in fact my school counselor at Brighton high. She made me promise I’d hype her up. So audience, buckle up for a great talk with Jolene. Hello, Jolene. So, first things first, our main question is what do you think the most important thing for students to know about counselors is?
Jolene: I would say the most important thing is that we are here for anything that kids need. Right? I think that a lot of the time kids think that they can only come to a counselor if they have a scheduling question, or sometimes they only think that they can come to a counselor, if they have like an emotional problem or a family problem. But really, we do everything. So we’re trying to create the best child as a whole, to come out of 27J.
Ray: So what would you say a day in the life of a school counselor really looks like?
Jolene: There is no day in the life of a school that is the same. So you know, any day is going to be different. So you have your typical day of seeing students, students sign up to see you about multiple things or events in their lives. And then, you know, crisis are always gonna throw a wrench in there as well. You know, there’s just the whole gamut of things that you could be dealing with on a daily basis.
Ray: So besides the generalized stuff that most people know about, what kind of work do counselors do that most people don’t know?
Jolene: I would say, most people probably think you know, that we are here for the students and that we do some of the social emotional pieces, which is absolutely a piece of what we do. But we’re not therapists, right. So that’s not our job. Our job is to, again, it’s a whole, it’s a whole pie, right? So there’s different pieces of it that we are always wanting to be a part of with a student’s life. So we’re dealing with the academic piece, we’re dealing with the post secondary piece, we’re dealing with the social emotional piece. Yes, we deal with scheduling as well.
But I think the two things if you asked a high school kid, like what is your counselor, do, they talk to me if I have a problem, and they change my schedule for me, right. But there’s a ton of other pieces that come into that and into the planning, we are really trying to be more proactive rather than reactive. So really wanting to do more school wide things that will help get kids into a better mental state, mental state of mind, dealing with social emotional pieces of it. Because all of the kids are dealing with those things. And then if we have to target the smaller population with more intensive than we can, you know.
We handle all the 504 plans in the building. We plan all the activities through the Brighton Youth Commission, we help partner with them. We help partner with all of the apprenticeships with Adams County consortium. And so we try to really build those community pieces as well. So it’s not just that we’re working with the kids, but we’re working with community and the parents and the teachers and admin. So I kind of see us as that central piece that connects all of those entities together.
Ray: You mentioned 504s a couple times. Could you kind of explain what that is to audience members who might not be familiar with it?
Jolene: Oh, sure. So 504 plan is when a student has a mental or physical disability that impacts them in the classroom, and they need accommodations to help them be successful. And so we manage all of those within our building, I would say probably each counselor has about 20 that we’re the case manager for. So we run the meetings, we make sure that the accommodations are happening in the classroom, that kind of thing.
Ray: So how do you feel counselors impact student success in school, for example, graduation rates?
Jolene: There’s a lot of different pieces to that, right. So you could look at the very black and white that, you know, we meet with all of our seniors to make sure that we start even earlier when they are sophomores and juniors to make sure that they’re on track with their credits, that they have a plan for the new demonstration requirement. So that’s just a general piece, right? And then it’s really on the student to make sure that they are doing what they need to meet those requirements. But we double check, triple check. We’re making sure we send letters out the beginning of their senior year like these are all the classes that you need in order to graduate and we’re here to support them all along way with any kind of credit recovery that they might have to do, because they didn’t pass the classes that they were in. Really, you know, figuring out is this the best place for you? The cool thing about 27J is we have other options, right? So if a public high school, of this size isn’t something that fits your needs, we have other options. And we have those conversations with the students and with their parents.
Ray: You kind of brought up credit recovery. If a student is struggling, what resources, if you could name a few, and programs, do we have to help students who are struggling or need a little bit more assistance?
Jolene: So it can be as general, as you know, we offer tutoring after school for our math department. Throughout our advisory program, every Thursday, we have our access time where students are able to go in and get that extra support from their teachers. We have an academic group, where we have a group of freshmen that we meet with just to really focus on organizational skills and things like that, if it needs to be more targeted.
We don’t want it to get to credit recovery, right. But we also know that sometimes when the kids are not passing the classes, it’s due to like lack of attendance, right? Or maybe they’re not quite understanding what is going on in the classroom. And so, it’s part of our job, you know, as I do a lot of meetings individually with kids, you know, checking grades every week, like, “Okay, what do you have missing now?” So just giving them that more of like individual attention, or really trying to invest a lot of time in the younger classmen, so that they have the skills that they need to be more successful as a junior and as a senior.
Ray: You were a counselor at Overland first. What would you say the difference is between being a middle school counselor and a high school counselor?
Jolene: Oh, my gosh, it’s night and day. I mean, Middle School is its own beast, right? Kids are figuring out who they are. It’s just… it’s very much more social, emotional based, right? Like you’re really trying to teach and give the students tools on how to be a good human being. And most of our middle schools now have two to three counselors, which is awesome. Because those kids really do need more of that intensive one on one support. But I think yeah, the difference with middle school and high schools, is that I actually get to see these kids growing into like these amazing young human beings, and pushing them out into the real world.
Ray: Many students currently kind of feel that, as you’ve mentioned, you guys are working on contacting and meeting your students earlier on. But many feel that from those interactions, you really don’t talk to your counselor before junior or senior year, and that there’s a bit of a disconnect. So do you feel from your side that there’s that disconnect there? Or that there’s kind of a gap in when students contact their counselors?
Jolene: It’s just… it’s a balancing act, right? Like how do we meet all of our students needs, where they are and what they and what they’re looking for in their counselor, and then also be able to really focus on our higher level kids and meeting their needs as well.
Ray: What kind of ways has been counseling changed in schools themselves changed since like the start of your career?
Jolene: The acceptance of the mental health need has been huge, right? That it’s okay to not be okay. We didn’t even have elementary school counselors when I started. And so the fact that we do have counselors in every building now, and they are going into the classrooms, you know, putting those things in place that is totally proactive, right? Like we’re trying to teach these kids these skills the same way we would teach them how to read and how we we teach them how to do math, it is just as important to teach a student behavior and how to act and how to feel and how to regulate those things. And so I love the fact that our district has really moved and shifted into this. We’re teaching as a whole child, right? Like we’re not just focusing on academics, but we’re also going to focus on who they are on the inside and what their emotional needs are.
Ray: Thank you so much for your time today and for helping me and all of the listeners kind of learn more about what our counselors do and how they help us through all of 27J.
Jolene: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Elby: Thanks for listening to the 27J Hall Pass–Your source for what’s happening in your neighborhood schools, from the students who are living in it.
Ray: The 27J Hall Pass is hosted by members of the 27J Schools Superintendent Student Advisory Council. Make sure to subscribe so you’ll always have the inside scoop on all things 27J schools.