With two new counselors joining the school and the need for letters of recommendaton coming up, many seniors applying for colleges are feeling a bit uneasy.
As a result of longtime Cal High Beverly Hall taking a new position in the counseling department, and former counselor Patty O’Malley departing, Susie Fitch and Erin Hill were hired to take on their former students.
In light of these recent changes, some Cal High seniors don’t know how concerned they should be about the letters of recommendation their counselors generally write.
Letters of recommendation are written for seniors applying to private colleges or certain colleges out of state. It is a letter of praise so that admission officers can get to know their applicants better.
With this letter of recommendation basically being a brief “about me” for a student, some students are unsure how personal this letter could be if they just switched to a counselor who doesn’t even know them yet.
“For the two new counselors, it will be hard (to write letters of recommendation),” said counselor Maria Dubose. “They were thrown into the fire.”
Students who received new counselors this year have expressed some worries, too.
“If she doesn’t know me, how is she going to write about me?” said senior Nancy Perez.
Senior Natali Feyzbakhsh shares Perez’s concerns.
“I am worried because I have only met (my counselor) twice and I feel she doesn’t know me well at all,” said Feyzbakhsh.
But there are students on the other side of the spectrum who are not concerned about their letters of recommendation despite the new counselors.
“I am not worried because I have a good relationship with (my counselor),” said junior Sarah Pisciotta.
Fitch is not concerned about this aspect of her new job either. She said she has been writing letters of recommendation as a teacher at Cal High for the past 15 years. Plus, she said she plans to meet her students as they “trickle in” to her office.
Cal has new counselors because the San Ramon Valley Unified School District received funding specifically for mental health, so a new student support counselor was created throughout the district.
This new position is strictly for helping students with their psychological needs and is in no way affiliated with the academics of the school.
Every high school hired one full-time student support counselor, while every middle school got one part-time student support counselor.
“I think mental health has been a needed area in the school,” Dubose said.
Hall now holds this job as Cal’s student support counselor. O’Malley, another longtime counselor at Cal, also applied for the position and was placed at two different middle schools. As a result, Fitch took over O’Malley’s caseload and Hill took over Hall’s.
Dubose encourages students, especially seniors, to use Family Connection so that counselors can learn their interests.
“Family Connection is the main way to get to know students,” Dubose said.
Filling out the information on the Family Connection website or a quick walk to the counseling office to say “Hello” to a new counselor is a sure way for students to ease their concerns about the relationship with their counselor and letters of recommendation.
