When Caitlin Quinn switched from her position as a guidance counselor to the Boyle house principal, some other things in the department changed as well.
Quinn commented on how interacting with the counselors changed. “My role in working with the counselors is a little bit different from where I used to see them all the time and work with them on everything we were doing with the students... I now see them only once a week in meetings and I’m there for more of a communication between counselors and principals.”
“In some ways my relationships with teachers has changed, just that I’m maybe interacting more and have a little bit of a different role on how I work with teachers, but in a lot of ways it stayed just the same,” she added.
“Since I always knew I wanted to be in a school and I found I liked the one-on-one work, I went back [to college] and got my masters in school counseling and in guidance counseling and so it kind of became a position that worked really well for me,” Quinn concluded.
Kristy Magras, the current Holland House counselor, used to be a part of the Pathways Program, which is a program for students who need extra help. “The opportunity came that Pathways needed a part-time guidance counselor and instantly, I loved working in that area. They are students like everybody else.”
Magras continued, “We became like a family. Even now when I see them out in the world; it's like they're still my students.“
Guidance counselors and adjustment counselors have similar jobs in the sense that they work with students outside of the classroom. But guidance counselors tend to work on career and college planning and academic awareness, while adjustment counselors focus more on mental health.
“Social workers, school adjustment counselors, spend more time taking a deeper dive into some of the mental health and emotional functions of students,” Benjamin Butler, the Boyle House adjustment counselor, stated.
“I started out teaching, and I taught for about four years and liked it, but I didn’t love it…I liked it but I also felt like there was a lot that was happening in the students’ lives that was more of a priority for them than the book that we were reading or the paper that we had to write,” Butler explained.
“I ended up getting more interested in the stories that students had than I was in the teaching side of things,” he continued.
“I ended up getting more interested in the stories that students had than I was in the teaching side of things."
Benjamin Butler
Like teachers, guidance counselors have to go through an interview process to see if they’re fit for the job. “I’ve sat in on a couple interviews and it’s really dialing in on if that individual would be a good support for the population here at Malden and what their values really are,” Alison White, the 9th Grade Boyle and Holland House counselor, said.
