By: Jasleen Leon-Sanchez
Starting high school will never be easy, the same goes for ending it. As students navigate through social and academic pressures, skilled and passionate guidance counselors are crucial. This is where the new counselor Ms. Flores comes in. Ms. Flores led freshmen and seniors to a smooth transition to their new beginnings. In this exclusive interview, Ms. Flores gives a new fresh perspective and her take on being a counselor.
Q: How do you like ELD so far?
A: I love it! I went to school here (it’s my alma mater), so a dream of mine was to come back and teach at this school. I’m glad I’m able to come back and be a counselor here.
Q: How long have you been working in the educator field?
A: I’ve been working as a counselor for five years and before that, I did three years of substitute teaching, that was in Tulare and here in Visalia. In total, it’s been about 8 years.
Q: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A: I´m hoping to still be here. I like this school and the community. My goal is just to be here as much as I can for students.
Q: What kind of impact do you wish to have?
A: Honestly, just to make students feel heard and listened to. I want to make sure when they see me they can kind of break down those walls and barriers and just really open up. That is the impact I wish I could have here on the students.
Q: Is teamwork a big part of the job?
A: Yeah, so I always say be a counseling team, especially something that is so new here at El D since you guess you have to learning directors. A lot of people don’t know how to utilize us or what we do, so I always say we all need to work together and kind of come up with how our counseling team wants to be known here.
Q: What is the difference between a learning director and a counselor?
A: Learning directors are more administrative such as dealing with more discipline and more supervision, with the counselor team we do more of those social-emotional learning aspects. We go in to do classroom lessons and dive deep and see what your motivation is and have that opening conversation to talk to students.
Q: How does it feel to be a staff member at your old school?
A: Amazingly, it’s still so unreal. I feel like have just graduated from here and now coming back, and I have some teachers that were my teachers you know what I mean: Mrs. Jolly, Mr. Perez, Mrs. Perez, Mr. Robb, so seeing them and they get to see how much I’ve progressed is cool.
Q: What is your favorite thing to do outside of work?
A: I love spending time with my family and I love soccer so we always play as much as we can. My husband and I are on the same team. My son is three and he just started AYSO.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: I’m excited to be here and I want students to come in if they have questions. I know that senior year is super important and freshman year too because they’re getting to know just a whole new transition.
Ms. Flores’ dedication and commitment are perfect for our school and community. We look forward to seeing the impact that she will undoubtedly bring.