There are many jobs I am glad I am not doing right now.  One more showed up on my radar today:  high school counselor.

We spent about an hour on the phone today with my daughter’s counselor, looking at scheduling options and trying to balance classes between two semesters.  This is a challenge, every year—and I leave her office amazed at the care she takes in making sure every student gets what they need (and want).

This year, she has another level of complexity to manage.  Students will only be in our local high school building one day a week—if they chose to be in the classroom at all. Monday and Tuesday are freshmen and sophomores.  Wednesday is completely off for in-depth cleaning.  Thursday and Friday bring in the juniors and seniors. 

There is another strand of students who opted to be completely remote.  They won’t be in the building at all.

One other complexity for us is the regional career center.  Our daughter is enthused about taking classes in early childhood development there.  For various reasons, students at the career center can take classes in person four times a week.  In our case, this would be one block, or 80 minutes, of class time four days a week—if we wanted to provide transportation to get her there and back.

We looked at all the options.   We thought through what they might mean in terms of workload and balance.  And we talked about how the pandemic would change what a specific course might be able to include, and whether it made more sense to take it now, or to wait. 

The silver lining in all of this?  I’m going with the gratitude I saw on my daughter’s face as she happily held up a final schedule.  She is happy—and she realizes the extra mile (or five) that this counselor has once again done for her students. 

It’s so easy for teenagers to gloss over how much others care.  I loved hearing that heartfelt thanks at the end of this conversation.