Back to school is arguably the busiest time of year for anyone in high school.
There are brand new classes to find, new friends to make, and a new sleep schedule to adjust to. The first thing on any student’s mind is their classes. The only people in charge of making those changes are counselors.
Counselors came into the office on July 16th.
“I changed 75 schedules,” counselor Zach Cash said, in reference to his first day back. “Then, that following Monday when the freshmen came back, I had 100 emails about schedule change requests.”
Each counselor is assigned a certain number of students, based on the first letter of the students’ last names.
Cash is assigned 400. Within the first week of school, Cash reported that “half the kids wanted some form of schedule change.”
Surrounded by phone calls, emails, and walk-ins — counselors can all agree that this time of year is really hard.
“You have 100 people needing something, and it all needs to get done in a timely manner,” Cash said.
Counselors show up to school 10 days before teachers do, making them some of the first people to prepare for the new school year.
“Our workload slowly starts ramping up — with phone calls and emails,” Cash said. “Then kids come back. That’s when it gets really exciting.”
With only five days to change as many schedules as they can, Northwest counselors feel lucky they even get this opportunity. Many schools in and out of the district don’t allow any schedule changes. Though those five days of schedule adjusting are busier than most people’s work week, “It gets super busy, but it’s nice to see everybody,” Cash said.
“We try to put in a situation where challenged academically, but also in a comfortable space for that semester,” Counselor Barbara Legate adds.
August schedule changes fade into January enrollment day, when the counselors are handed a new set of tasks. They have to check up on the seniors halfway through the year to see if their credits are coming along slowly but surely. And on top of that, they have to enroll the rest of the student body in their classes for the upcoming school year.
As winter turns into spring, graduation is on everyone’s mind. Not only is it an important milestone for the graduates and their parents, it’s a heart-warming moment for the counselors. “Getting to celebrate that— is beautiful,” Cash said.
“It’s like proud parents watching your own child cross the stage,” Legate said. “ the accomplishment and the pride on their face knowing how hard they worked for that,” Legate admits.
Counselors go from watching the freshmen enroll in their first foods class, to then taking a leap of faith and taking their first honors class.
To then dropping out of chemistry at the semester, to finally earning their last credit hour of English.
Like a carousel, students walk across the stage, one by one. As the counselors sit back and “get to watch all that come to fruition,” Cash says. They watch the graduates trickle through a single-file line year after year.
Similar to their to-do list, it seems like it would never end, and just when they thought it would, it was time to refresh their inbox.
“It’s important to just stay focused on the why,” Legate says.
Each counselor’s ‘why’ can look different.
Maybe they want to see a struggling student of theirs walk across the stage at graduation.
Maybe they want to treat their students how they would want their child to be treated in a counseling office.
Maybe they just want their students to push themselves a little bit harder.
Or — maybe they want their student to “leave here, being a well-rounded Northwest student, who has a plan,” Legate adds.
“This is why we do it,” Legate says.
