Amanda R.'s TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS
Amanda R.'s TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS
37, School Counselor, Pennsylvania
The perspectives and stories shared in this conversation reflect only those of the speakers and in no way represent the viewpoints of their employers or connected organizations.
Amanda is a 37-year-old school counselor based in rural Pennsylvania. During this episode of TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS, she shares about her decision to pursue school counseling, what family members can do to advocate for children in their life and why she got involved as a volunteer in the fire department.
Please note: Our conversation has been edited and condensed for this newsletter. Enjoy the full conversation with Amanda on the TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS podcast through Substack and on Spotify.
Who are you, what do you do for a living, and what are you passionate about right now?
My name is Amanda, I am an elementary school counselor. I work in a primary school with grades Kindergarten, first and second. Then outside of my paid job, I am a volunteer firefighter in my local area, so that is my “free job,” as I explain to the kids in school, and then school counseling is my paid job.
And what are you passionate about right now?
Right now, we’re doing a lot of community outreach in the fire department side of my life, so that’s kind of where I’m passionate. We’re trying to do more community-driven events that aren’t just focused on the emergency response part of it. Like getting people to see us when they’re not in an emergency.
I love that, and we’ll talk more about that in a little bit. Amanda, can you share your 3-5-minute career story from graduating high school, going to college, deciding what you wanted to study in college, and how that’s flowed to where you are now?
Sure! I graduated from high school and when I was going to college, I was undecided for my major. I really knew I wanted to do something to help people, but I wasn’t sure how to make that happen. I changed my major a lot as an undergrad, and I graduated in 2009 with a degree in English Literature because that was something I could finish on time. After that, I started working in hospitality. I lived close to a family resort and started working at the front desk there. There was an opening at one point for a marketing assistant, and I thought that communications and marketing would be really interesting. I applied and didn’t get it, but there was another opening at a different property within that resort family that I did get to do, which was part-time. So, I worked at their front desk and did that part-time. I found out quickly that that was not my jam, it was not as much fun as I thought it would be and I was getting burnt out in hospitality, so I actually applied for an undergraduate admissions counselor job. I applied three times, the third time they hired me in the third round of openings.
While I was working with high schoolers as an undergraduate admissions counselor, I realized that I wanted to work with students and help them figure out what their passions are and what they’d like to do after they graduate. So that translated into getting a school counseling Master’s degree while working full-time. In between graduating with my Master’s in 2017 and getting my first school counseling job, I worked as a human resources recruiter for that same resort family of properties that I started out in my post-undergraduate experience. In August after I graduated, I got a job as a K-8 school counselor. It was supposed to be a long-term substitute position for one year at a small charter school and then it ended up being that that counselor didn’t end up returning. So, I worked there for two and half years, and I wanted something closer to home and something in my home school district opened up. I applied and was hired as a college and career counselor at the high school local to me. I was hired and I started in December of 2019, and then COVID-19 happened in March and school closed, and we did virtual everything. I was trying to figure out how to be a college and career counselor over the computer as everyone else was trying to figure out how to adapt to their jobs as being remote. I did that for another school year and then an opening came up at the elementary level and I realized that was my spot. I really like classroom lessons, I like working with the younger kids. Not that I had any problems with the high schoolers, but I liked that elementary counseling was more than what I was doing in the high school. I took the job, and this is my third school year in that position as an elementary school counselor.
That’s really nice. Outside of the college and career prep and probably the social-emotional, is there any other big difference between being a high school counselor vs. elementary aged?
I spend way more time in the classroom at the elementary level. So, I actually teach lessons twice a month in first and second grade. My co-counselor teaches Kindergarten — there are two of us in my building. It’s nice, we have a caseload of about 450 kids and it’s split between the two of us, so that makes it much more manageable. But I do twice-monthly lessons, then we also run small support groups for students on different topics. So, the groups are very different at the elementary level than they would be at the high school level. As a college and career counselor I didn’t really do groups, I didn’t do a lot of the social-emotional piece like you said. And at the elementary level, the issues that they’re coming to us with are a lot less individual counseling than at the high school level. Typically, they’re coming to us with smaller like friendship issues, sometimes there are the bigger things that are going on in their lives like their families that are impacting them in school, but there’s much less of the individual counseling. At the high school I didn’t do any classroom lessons or groups.
Oh interesting, thank you for sharing that. Besides the technical skills that you gained in graduate school, which is typical for a preparation program like that, is there anything else that you feel has prepared you to do this work well? What do you think makes a school counselor do their job well? What sets them up for success?
It’s part of the graduate program, but it’s always the last piece, the hands-on and getting to be in the schools and working with the students and shadowing school counselors was informative. I’ve also joined professional associations. So, I’ve joined some local school counseling associations and our state association. That’s been helpful to me in being able to network with other counselors and use it as a resource. In addition to anything I can find, like groups on social media can sometimes be helpful to gain resources. And I think that school counselors are successful when you have the ability to be empathetic. So, if you are someone who wants to go in and just check the boxes day-in and day-out, that’s not really how you’ll be successful. I think that being flexible and empathetic is helpful to being successful as a school counselor.
On those lines, a lot of readers and listeners here are mothers, parents or have desires to be future parents, from your perspective as a school counselor, especially working across the ages, how do you feel that parents, family members, guardians can best advocate for their student and be a good partner? Especially knowing a lot of places have larger caseloads and they have a lot of students they’re working with, and they have contract hours.
Communication is absolutely key. So, I have conversations with parents, and unfortunately the relationship starts out when the parent calls me when something goes wrong. And a lot of our conversations pertain to an issue the student is having or something that’s going on in the family, like a change in the family unit (parent leaving, separation or divorce, a parent who’s incarcerated or passes away, a family member being deployed for the military). A lot of those things are kind of the start of the conversation, and sometimes that is the only conversation we have. But for me, it’s helpful when parents work with me to build a relationship outside of all the major life events. I encourage parents to reach out if they have a question about something that’s going on at school. I work with the teachers, so being open to communicating with your child’s school counselor and in the method of communication that works best for both of you. Email works well for me because I am not often at my desk, I’m in a classroom, I’m in a group, I’m in the building somewhere, I’m out at recess. So, for me being able to receive an email and respond that even if I can’t handle it right now, that I got it and I’ll get back to you after I get into it.
Also, being open to having a relationship with your child’s counselor. I think a lot of time there’s a misperception among parents and it’s not anything against the parents. I think it’s just a misconception of years of changes in the role of a school counselor that aren’t really well communicated. A.) we’re not just doing guidance, we’re not just doing scheduling changes, we’re not just talking to high school seniors about where they’re going to college. At the elementary level, I spend a lot more time with their child, than many parents even realize until they come in for parent-teacher conferences. And I’m not somebody who’s just going to say, “oh, your child needs therapy,” or I’m not doing anything untoward or providing any kind of services in school that aren’t beneficial to a child. I think that sometimes parents still think that their child talking to a school counselor is going to therapy. There’s still a stigma around mental health and around counseling and therapy to where parents will sometimes say, “I don’t want you talking to my child about anything that’s going on at home.” And it’s just to say that I’m someone they can talk to at school and to understand that I’m not passing judgement on your child or your family, or your belief or practices in any way. I’m just here to help your kid succeed in school and if there’s something big that’s going on, that’s a big barrier to their academic success and their mental well-being in school.
Oh, for sure. I feel too, there’s still this stigma associated with mental health, but I also feel like it’s become such a part of the cultural conversation. Do you feel like, especially thinking about the pandemic and how that shifted the conversation, especially with children being out of school for that timeframe, are you finding that there’s a little bit more openness to having students come see you than maybe what colleagues have said from prior to the pandemic. Has there been a shift in that?
I think there seems to be, and at least in my experience, I feel like each year that I’ve been in that building, I’ve had more conversations with parents that have led to me saying, “your child came to me and talked about this,” or a parent calls and says that their child needs to speak with someone about something. Then that conversation goes beyond just me saying that we did one check-in, to parents being open to receiving a list of resources. We have a list of counseling referral resources broken down by type in a 1-hour driving vicinity that take on children as clients. There’s been more openness to the conversation around mental health. I still get the hard stops from some parents, but I have gotten parents who seem more receptive to at least receiving the resources and I can send it to them in an email, rather than it go home with the student in their folder in a sealed envelope. There’s been some more openness to them, which is good. It’s good that they’re open at least to receiving the information.
Yeah, that’s always the goal, to be able to invite the conversation. It’s here for when, not necessarily when the child is ready because in your opinion the child probably is ready, sometimes for parents to get to that stage. So, outside of your day-to-day work, you mentioned that you are a volunteer within your area fire department. Can you talk about what made you first get involved with it and what you wish more people knew about the work of local and volunteer fire departments.
Depending on where people are listening from, everything is a little different, we are volunteer here. There’s no paid fire department in my area, I live in a rural area of Pennsylvania, and we have volunteer fire services in all of the counties around where I live. I ended up getting involved through my dad. He’s been a member of our fire department since 1974, and I grew up spending time at the firehouse. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t super interested in being involved with the fire department. It was not a cool thing back then, I think it’s gained a bit more social acceptance now, but it was not something I had any desire to do. I ended up getting back involved in the fire department as an adult because I had taken an EMT class while I was working at one of the resort properties. I like continuing education and I was still trying to find my way to what else I wanted to do with my life, and EMT fit the bill of helping people. While I was in the class, two of the guys there were volunteers with the fire department where I volunteer now. And I had known them and I kind of reconnected with them and got interested in being involved with the department and actually being a firefighter as an adult, and that was 11 years ago.
As far as what I think people should know more about the volunteer service. I think there’s a misconception that in order to be involved in the fire department, you have to give up all kinds of crazy amounts of time or that the only thing we need help with is firefighting. There are many opportunities for people to be involved. We do fundraising, we do community events, we have in-house training and drills, there are different roles within the department like there’s a business side to operating a volunteer fire department. We’re a non-profit organization, there’s opportunities to help with grants. There’s a role for pretty much everyone and if people want to get involved, you don’t have to be afraid of not knowing something because everybody’s starts from the ground up, and all the training is provided for free. So, if it’s something that people are interested in, it’s definitely helpful.
And you mentioned when we first started that you all are looking into doing more community outreach, what does that look like for you all?
So, we picked up some different community events in the last handful of years that I really enjoy. I’m the chairperson of the community outreach committee, so we do a Santa Run at Christmastime with one of our mutual aid departments. So, we decorate the trucks with Christmas lights, and we have Santa and Mrs. Clause, and we go to two of our communities in our response area, the two largest communities, and they then throw their own kind of party during that time. So, we bring Santa and Mrs. Clause there, the kids get to see the fire trucks, and it’s just a nice way to be out in the community without having it be for some kind of awful thing that’s happening. We have our fundraising events too, every year we have Breakfast with the Easter Bunny and Breakfast with Santa, and those are free for children in the community. And we’re always exploring other ways to get involved and to be out and be visible in the community so people feel able to approach us. At an emergency scene, we’re the opposite of approachable. That’s just the goal, to be visible and have people see us being involved in the community, and ask questions, and see the fire trucks and the gear and the equipment.
Yeah, especially for children. It’s so scary to see a firefighter in full gear, even out in the wild on a bright blue sunshiny day, let alone under the duress of an emergency, it compounds that. I love that you all are doing that and how exciting that you get to lead the charge on that.
Yeah, it’s fun.
How do you manage your time? Do you have any tips or tricks or things between schoolwork, prepping for school, being at work, managing family and friendships, your work in the fire department. How do you manage your time? What works for you?
I wish I could say that I have tips and tricks and that I’m really super on top of my time management, but that has always been a struggle for me. I have a little bit of a time blindness that happens to me. I always think it’s going to take less time to complete something than it ultimately does. I start out really ambitious and sometimes I have to scale things back. So, I learned early on in my career working as a school counselor that I have to set reasonable goals and that I need to not expect to be able to do everything all at once. It helps to have a set schedule of when we do trainings and when we have meetings for the fire department, so that is helpful. My school schedule being set is helpful, so then the only unknown variable is when my tones will go off and my pager, and we get called. But I unfortunately don’t have any tips or tricks.
That’s okay, I appreciate it. I do have to say that I always admired you doing school full-time and working full-time, especially in a program that is typically pursued full-time with no other things going on, but then the travel of being an admissions counselor and being in the office in addition to that. Please know I give you a lot of credit for your time management. Not to veer a little bit, but what do you think it takes to be a good friend, a good sister, a good daughter, nowadays — thinking about life outside of work?
I think that for me, sometimes I have to stop myself because I feel like my personal relationships outside of my immediate family, my mom, my dad, my brother, and my friends who I see in my volunteer work at the firehouse. I feel like those relationships are always kind of the first things to shove on the back burner. I have to remind myself that I need to be reaching out to people and I need to be nurturing my social relationships. For me, it’s having reasonable expectations of what friendship looks like, which has changed so much from being a kid to being an adult in my late thirties. To say that I don’t always need to be in constant communication with my friends that I’ve had for a long time, but I do need to check in with them. I do need to make an effort, if someone has something going on, even if it’s a weekend and I’m exhausted from the workweek, I will always feel better after I do that thing, spend that time with people who matter to me. I feel worse when I don’t go, I never feel worse having gone and spent the time with them. That was one of the things that happened to me during the pandemic, there was this shift of we couldn’t see each other, and then I felt starved for social relationships, but then I realized the importance of being at least in communication virtually with the people who matter the most to me.
I appreciate that honesty a lot. I’m one of those people that I don’t necessarily reach out to people, but I’m thinking about them and sending good vibes, even if I haven’t texted you in months, it doesn’t mean I don’t think about you, ya know? So, I appreciate that as something I too need to work on. What would 11-year-old Amanda think about the life and career that you have built for yourself?
I was thinking about this earlier and I think that 11-year-old Amanda might be a little perplexed about what it is exactly that a school counselor does. In elementary school I feel like I saw my elementary school counselor — I don’t remember if she came into the classroom at that time, I’m sure she did. But I don’t remember what a school counselor did in elementary school, so once I explained what this job is to my 11-year-old self, she would think it was very cool and that I got to work with kids. I don’t remember exactly what I wanted to be at 11, but I’ve always kind of been around the helping professions and education in my thoughts of what my future career would be, so I think she would think that it was pretty cool that we got to do this. And then the volunteer piece on top of that, she might roll her eyes a little bit at me, because that’s the firehouse and where we spend time with dad. I think she’d be pretty proud of me.
RAPID FIRE
What is a piece of advice you received that has impacted the way you look at building and maintaining your career?
In my graduate program, our program director emphasized the importance of setting reasonable goals for yourself and understanding that it takes 5-10 years to build a school counseling program. You will not do it all in the first year, and that’s okay.
That’s a good perspective, a good reminder for a lot of us out there in the working world. What do you hope for yourself in 5 years?
I’m planning on embarking on a graduate program starting in January. I’d like to start a counselor education supervision Ph.D. program, so I’m hoping to be nearing the completion of that program in five years, be in the same place that I am now in my volunteer efforts, and I would be absolutely okay being in the same role that I’m in in my career. I would just like the opportunity to become more involved in activities at school and expand my role out a little if I can.
Oh, good luck with that, you’ll have to keep us posted! What have you read or listening to recently that has stuck with you?
I read a lot of fiction, but I started listening to a new podcast. I’m a big fan of the X-Files from the ’90’s and David Duchovny has a podcast called Fail Better and they interview different celebrity guests, and they talk about their famous failures and how they actually helped them. It’s an interesting take on reframing something that can be absolutely devastating and learning how to grow from it.
What is your favorite thing to get you excited or pumped up for a big day?
Definitely music. Depending on my mood and what I have to do, I have an assortment of playlists. It’s usually probably early 2000’s music, the music of my teenage years.
What is your preferred way to use vacation time or PTO?
I go every summer with my mom to the Jersey Shore. I like going to the beach, but I don’t need to go far to get away. I do also occasionally take a personal day as a mental health day. I do save them for occasions that I need them, but I’m also willing to part with a personal day to spend time at home or go out and do things that make me feel relaxed and reconnected to myself.
Finally, what is your TOO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS right now?
I think for me, this is my seventh year working as a school counselor, I’m at that place where I still have a little imposter syndrome. Where I feel like if I don’t know an answer or if I make a mistake, I worry that I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I also worry that if I make a mistake that someone is judging or questioning my competence. And I know I’m qualified, and I know that I know what I’m doing and what I should be doing, but that does cause me anxiety.
Thank you so much to Amanda for joining us this week and sharing the story of her career and life journey. Our podcast together goes into even more detail, so I encourage you to take a listen.
Be sure to share in the comments something that Amanda said that resonated with you or send this episode to a friend to encourage them on their career journey.
As always, I’m grateful you’re here and wish you a week ahead with only the best exclamation points! — Skylar