GETTING TO KNOW YOUR COUNSELOR

Getting to Know Your Counselor

By Steven Garcia

Mayra Garcia is the new Magnet counselor that will be helping us through our many hardships in high school, such as planning our future out.  She’s the kind of woman who takes time from her busy schedule to do an interview. She’s the kind of woman who put the students’ needs before her paper work.

Ms. Garcia was a student at Franklin High School and graduated 1999. Ms. Garcia attended UC Santa Barbara and graduated with her Bachelor’s degree in 2003 and with her Masters in 2006. She loves baseball and is a HUGE Dodgers fan.  It was also made known that Ms. Garcia has a 16-month old daughter whose name is Sophia.

The college counselor at her school, Ms. Hanen, helped her get to college when she wasn’t planning on going.  Her mentality was that she was only junior college material.  Her counselor had her apply to colleges anyway. She said she couldn’t decide whether or not to pursue social work or school counseling.  Ms. Garcia was finally able to make her decision by completing internships which included shadowing another counselor by the name of Ms. Conwell.  While shadowing Ms. Garcia said that she loved working with the students thus she made her choice to be a counselor.  She plans to further her education and get a degree to be an attendance counselor.

We can plan to see her at most of the Magnet events, getting to know the students she will be working with.  Our counselor says that she wants to get to know the students, but regrets being moved to the Attendance Office.  As she stated, “it’s different being away from the Magnet office; I really liked it over there, also it’s harder for the students to find me.”

What she doesn’t like about her job is the paper work which can be both overwhelming and frustrating, but she loves helping the students in planning their future.  She was originally a counselor at Nightingale Middle School.  We can be glad, however, because she’s planning to stay here long term.  I was really glad to hear her say, “I don’t really see myself going anywhere else.”

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Posted in Current Topics, Other, Parents, Staff, Students