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now, i want to make it clear from the very beginning that there are three teachers at Evergreen High School that are exempt from my – for lack of a better word – wrath. Mrs. J. W., Mr. G. C., and Mr. C. B. They know who they are. Hopefully.
Alright. Let’s get started.
EHS’s mission is to “[engage] all students in rigorous, creative, and innovative educational experiences that prepare them to advance the global community.”
that just makes me laugh. that, to me, is adult-speak for “testing students to determine their entire worth” and “preparing students for a life that may not even fit them.”
“what’s your big deal with testing, King? it’s the way to determine how students are doing, king!” i hear you ask in my fevered imagination.
well, listeners, sit down and prepare to be amazed. there are students, myself included, that have this magical thing called ~test anxiety~
“test anxiety? that’s just bulls**t for kids who don’t know the information and want to get out of the work.”
excuse me while i take a deep breath because even making up that question makes me so feckin ANGRY. what will it take for you all (adult authority figures) to believe us?
i want to tell you a little story, listeners. this is the story of my junior year of high school, objectively one of the more terrible years in all the years i have existed. i decided sophomore year that i was going to take AP calculus in my junior year, because hey, i’m super smart! i can handle it!
i laugh at my own naiveté, listeners. back then i didn’t know how bad my test anxiety could get. back then, i wasn’t even diagnosed with anxiety. and boy howdy did that class get real hard real quick. but nobody would listen to me when i said i hated it. they all assumed that i hated it in the same way everybody else did – that it was hard, but that it was manageable.
riddle me this, listeners: what are school counselors supposed to do? what, exactly, are their jobs? to my knowledge, the job of a school counselor is to ~counsel~ their students on a path in the future, to administer standardized tests, and to keep an eye on their students in case they start to exhibit signs of an impending nervous breakdown.
guess what? dear Tera Koentges, my high school counselor, you failed me.
you messed up.
you didn’t do your job.
you didn’t catch any of it.
i had to break down in the middle of third period to actually be taken seriously. it wasn’t enough that my grades were slipping, that i was more withdrawn than usual, or that i was slipping back into stress-eating, which is a disordered eating habit that i’ve exhibited ever since the Great Childhood Trauma of 2010.
i had to leave the classroom in tears. in the middle of what i recognize now was a panic attack. and you tried, Tera, to figure out what was going on with me. you tried comforting me. you tried to do your job, but too little too damn late, honey. the damage was already done.
now, let me be clear about one thing: not all of this is Ms. Koentges’s fault. i’m not putting the entirety of this on her.
i’m putting it on the counseling department. i’m putting it on the administration. i’m putting it on jeffco schools. they all failed me.
EHS’s new website is bright and shiny and proclaims that they’ve received awards on their exemplary counseling to their students. they claim “the national model establishes a school counseling program designed to ensure that every student has equitable access to his or her school counseling program.”
it’s not equitable access if each counselor has ~100 to ~200 students to deal with, and has to administer standardized tests as well.
it’s not equitable access if the counselor is overwhelmed by the amount of students and can’t see the, often times, subtle signs of an impending collapse.
EHS claims their counseling department “identifies and delivers the knowledge and skills to all students in the academic, personal/social, and college/career domains. We are thrilled to support our amazing students and their families.”
EHS, you have five counselors to deal with a touch over one thousand students. let me do the math for you. that’s two hundred students a counselor.
no wonder EHS is churning out f***ed up student after f***ed up student. two hundred students a counselor? how the hell are the counselors supposed to counsel the students if they have that many?
answer: they can’t. it’s literally impossible to spot students who are suffering from undiagnosed mental disorders if you have two hundred to watch.
EHS counseling department: “we are ~thrilled~ to support our amazing students and their families!!”
Me: …..where they at though
Seriously. When the Great Childhood Trauma of 2010 happened, EHS awarded my siblings, who were in that school at the time, an award. As if an award can fix the multitude of issues that my siblings are dealing with?? And when I came around, the youngest in a legacy family – I’m not kidding, my mom and her siblings went to EHS too – there was no support. Nothing except a vague “oh yeah, it’s her. we know her.” My counselor never reached out and actually asked me how I was doing at that point. Which, you know, I don’t exactly blame her now, because I know she had ~200 students to deal with.
But all of this begs the question: why didn’t I reach out for help? High schools are supposed to teach self-sufficiency, right? Why didn’t I talk to my mother, or talk to my counselor, or talk to, heck, anybody?
Here’s the funny thing about me, folks: i have an ~anxiety disorder~… ooOoOOooooOooOo…. who knew??
(That’s me being very sarcastic.)
Asking me, Anxiety Girl, to self-advocate back in high school, is like asking you, Presumably Neurotypical Human, to cook a three-course meal blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.
Yeah.
It’s really, really difficult.
Even now, I have trouble approaching my professors to ask for help. I prefer email communication. It took weeks for me to open up enough to my therapist to start the healing process. And besides, I was a grieving sixteen year old. How was I supposed to reach out for help when I was too damn empty inside to care?
EHS counseling: you. have. failed in your mission. I did not have equitable access to a counselor. None of us did.
You did not deliver the knowledge nor the skills to me to succeed in my academic life.
You did not prepare me to succeed in college.
Tera Koentges and Merrie Wrinn, the two counselors I had in high school: you failed in your mission. That’s not necessarily your fault, but it does not negate the fact that I slipped through the cracks. It was your job to catch me, and I fell, and I shattered.
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collegiate essayist 