Work Piling up for Counselors

If you need to switch out of a class, go to the counselor. If you need to talk to someone about personal matters, go to the counselor. Students at Lakeland High School find themselves going to the counselors more than ever and with the new semester, the counselors are very busy. 

How big is the counselors’ workload? 

“I am extremely busy! I often say that I wish I could clone myself because there is so much to do! I work constantly from the time I get here until I leave. I LOVE the work I do,” states Carrie Paquette, a counselor at Lakeland High School. 

Mrs. Paquette is also helping a lot of seniors with choosing colleges. She also has a statewide College and Career Professional Learning Community that she is a part of. She was also asked by the State Board of Education to be the Region 1 Counselor Ambassador for the state of Idaho.

Frank Vieira, another counselor at LHS said, “All of us in the counseling department are busy during and after school gets out for students.  With the new semester, we have helped a ton of students with changing classes.”

The counseling department stated that they are especially busy because of the new semester. Enrolling close to 50 new students, and helped some with getting into online learning, personal counseling, college scholarships and applications, career education, KTEC applications, Dual Credit college applications, class selections, balancing classes so that we keep them from getting too big and much more.

When asked, Rachel Foreman stated, “When I go to the counselor’s office, even though they might seem very busy I still feel like I am the number one priority, even if there are hundreds of kids in this school. Also, they make things happen.”

With the new semester here and counselors working hard to get students into the right classes, but do COVID-19 restrictions affect the work they do?

“It is harder to help the seniors who are in school online only because the in-person meetings are really important. I do Zoom meetings with those students and we email. But for students who are here at school, I haven’t experienced it being harder to help them,” states Paquette.

Nothing has really changed even with COVID-19 restrictions. The changes that do happen, they make sure to adapt so that every student at Lakeland High School can have a great experience.

Correction: The second to last quote in the article was stated by Carrie Paquette, not Frank Vieira. The Hawkeye regrets this error.