Tedie Cole leads an art lesson at Immaculate Conception School in Fort Smith. Cole uses art therapy to give students a way to communicate their feelings and work through any difficulties they are experiencing. (Photo courtesy Tedie Cole; prints not available)

Amy Owens and Sister Joan Pfauser, RSM, greet a student in the counseling office at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock. The school emphasizes a number of counseling options for students. (Dwain Hebda photo)

Sister Iliana Aponte, DC, catches up with sixth-graders Vanessa Martinez and Sherley Hernandez after a school Mass at St. Theresa Church in Little Rock. Sister Iliana lends an ear for students at St. Theresa School. (Dwain Hebda photo)

Teri Breeding takes notes during a student consult at St. Joseph High School in Conway. The school’s two counselors regularly appear in class starting in elementary grades to talk to students and build trust. (Dwain Hebda photo)

Dude the therapy dog takes in story time with third-graders at Our Lady of Holy Souls School in Little Rock. Dude and his handler Aimee Glasgow make the rounds at school one day a week. (Dwain Hebda photo)

Between appointments, Little Rock Catholic High’s Brother Richard Sanker, CFP, catches a moment’s respite. Brother Richard said social media and changes in families’ makeup are among the leading sources of stress on students. (Dwain Hebda photo)

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School counseling evolves with the changing times

High school counselors becoming more visible, proactive with students

Published: May 7, 2019

By Dwain Hebda
Little Rock Correspondent

Dwain Hebda

Jennifer Roscoe, counselor at Sacred Heart School in Morrilton, catches up with ninth-graders Karlee Cooper (left) and Maggie Lentz between classes. Roscoe said students everywhere face the same pressures and challenges.

Dwain Hebda

In lower grades, support can take different forms

The Catholic elementary or junior high schools in Arkansas cannot afford a full-time counselor on staff, but a growing number of these schools are finding creative ways to provide the necessary support to students. Arkansas Catholic found three such resources serving the children of diocese.

The Dude Abides

Not long ago, the morning announcements at Our Lady of the Holy Souls School in Little Rock included the introduction of a new faculty member, a therapist. Students were not initially impressed.

“The kids told me when they first heard that they were horrified,” said Aimee Glasgow, a member of the parish and mother of a student. “They couldn’t believe the school was going to make them talk to a therapist.”

But when that therapist turned out to be Dude, Glasgow’s 8-year-old Golden Labradoodle, attitudes quickly changed. These days, Dude the therapy dog is a familiar — and welcome — sight on his regular weekly visit to school.

“He brings an overall sense of joy to the school. When kids see him, their faces light up,” said Glasgow, a social worker with Arkansas Children’s Hospital. “He’s nonjudgmental. Last week I heard so many people say, ‘I think he really likes me,’ and I was like, ‘I think he does, too.’ He makes them feel special.”

Dude’s role is a fluid one, ranging from being a listener for kids who are learning to read to teaching the youngsters about self-control and respect for living things. Older students derive something much deeper.

“If [children] want to be by Dude, they know they have to keep their voice lower, they have to be gentle with him,” Glasgow said. “Some of the kids come over and one of the older kids today was talking about her anxiety. She said, ‘Just petting Dude makes me so much calmer.’”

Soul Sister

A caring heart and a ready ear can work miracles, at least that’s the talk around St. Theresa School in Little Rock these days. The school has seen it up close in soft-spoken Sister Iliana Aponte, DC, who has been in Arkansas since last November and working with the school since February.

“I’m really not offering counseling services at the Santa Teresa School,” she said. “Simply what I am offering is a service of listening and support.”

Sister Iliana is called upon by teachers who notice a student who’s struggling with schoolwork or socialization. Thus far, all her charges have been from the Hispanic community where a lot of issues stem from separated families.

“That is very sad because how is a child in kindergarten supposed to understand what their parents are doing?” she said. “We are talking about disintegrated families for reasons of well-being, to seek a better life for their children, but it is the children who are suffering the consequences.”

Students get more than a ready ear from Sister Iliana; she also employs artwork for younger kids and dance therapy for teens. Though she’s still new, she’s already achieving results.

“The children that I have seen see me and run towards me because they want to ask me if we are going to go paint. This leads me to conclude that they see me as their temporary mother figure,” she said.

The Art of Caring

Five days a week, Tedie Cole leads students at Immaculate Conception School in Fort Smith through art lessons designed to bring out their creative side. But she also leads other groups of students through art that’s no less creative but has a far more serious intent.

“I’ve always kind of dabbled in art therapy, just depending on need,” she said. “What we’ve started here are some educational art groups for coping skills, social skills and maybe a specific group that might be struggling with attention deficit.”

In these weekly meetings, Cole uses various art medium to help students express what they’re feeling. The very process of creating art is often enough to relax students and make them more willing to talk about their issues.

“Art is just another form of communication for young people who struggle to find the words,” she said. “I have a group of fourth- and fifth-graders and we’ve been meeting since October. I did a road drawing exercise with them to kind of see where they’re at.”

“They share their drawing and we point out things that are maybe not compatible with what they’re saying. Maybe their road was really bumpy and had jagged glass in it, so we might point out, ‘Your road feels very scary or dangerous, yet you say you’re feeling better.’ That allows us to talk and process and kind of open up a different avenue for kiddos.”

It’s half an hour to first period and Little Rock’s Mount St. Mary Academy is slowly waking up. The halls are quiet, much quieter than they’ll be in a few minutes, but the sisterhood is up full blast on a row of lockers.

“You got this!” screams a yellow flyer, scrawled in the unmistakable font of teenage girls.

“You’re awesome!” pipes another as it flutters to passersby.

Just down the hall from this cacophonous chorus line of well-wishes, Sister Joan Pfauser, RSM, has similar affirmation on tap each day, every day. Starting this year, she’s focusing strictly on personal counseling, having offloaded the college prep portion of her job at the start of the school year. It’s just one sign of many of the increased emphasis her ministry to the emotional development of students has earned here.

“The whole idea of the self is different today,” she said. “In the past, (students) were kind of searching for themselves. They almost don’t have a sense of self. And not that they’re not looking for who they are, but they almost don’t have a clue. The search for the self is just harder for them.”

Part of that challenge is diminished personal connectivity brought about by digital communication.

“Face-to-face has become screen-to-screen. It makes things harder,” she said. “They’re also bombarded by input of who they are from other people. They’re always being judged on social media and when you’re constantly trying to externally or internally defend who you think you are, you really don’t get to who you are.”

Neither Sister Joan nor her cohort Amy Owens said it was particularly challenging to get students to visit the counseling office. The trick, they said, is cutting through to the real issue.

“You have to do some solution-focused brief counseling because we only have them for so many minutes,” Owens said. “Even though we have long class periods, we can’t keep them for an hour and a half. ‘What do we need to get through here before you go back and manage your day?’”

If you think sharing one’s feelings and struggles is strictly a function of an all-girls school, think again. Robert Pugh has been counselor at Subiaco Academy for nearly a decade and can attest to similar conditions within the all-male student body.

“The boys I see place a lot of pressure on themselves” he said. “Our boys love to compete; they compete academically, they compete athletically, and we celebrate those achievements.”

The presence of a full-timer like Pugh isn’t the only sign that counseling is valued around here. Next year, the school will roll out a parallel curriculum that addresses students’ emotional development to go along with subject matter. That, and Pugh’s already-consistent presence, is hoped to further break down social and cultural stigmas that sometimes keep students from seeking help.

“I’ve talked with boys from 16 different countries and in my experience, boys are boys, no matter where they’re from,” he said. “We see kids that are dealing with a lot of the same issues that are in the public schools — ADD, ADHD and a couple of other things.”

“We are constantly evolving and bettering our programs as a result, to really get the kids oriented to who they can reach out to if they are having this issue or that issue.”

One big part of a counselor’s effectiveness is the trust they engender not just to seek personal help but to refer a friend who’s struggling, also. Doing so is a difficult bridge for some students to cross, said Jennifer Roscoe, counselor at Sacred Heart School in Morrilton.

“We all know peer pressure and ‘I don’t want to be a snitch,’ and all those things,” she said. “I do feel like most of our students, if there is a legitimate concern, feel that they can come and talk to me or somebody else. Peer interaction can always be improved, though; I feel like you can never have enough eyes, never have enough ears.”

While not as prevalent as it once was, Roscoe said there’s still a residual attitude that kids in a parochial school are insulated or immune to problems faced by other kids.

“Depression, anxiety, relationship problems, all that, absolutely,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of it just today already.”

“(Students) are not sheltered just because they come here. There are real problems and we’ve got all kinds of kids coming through now, kids with issues we may not have been able to handle before because we weren’t equipped to.”

Being equipped means being tactical. Teri Breeding, high school counselor at St. Joseph School in Conway, said regular classroom time is one way she and her counterpart, elementary/middle school counselor Kristen Piraino, stay engaged with the student body. The duo present various classes, workshops and orientations to impart coping skills and also to build rapport and trust.

“I think the younger students, once they know who to reach out to, are more willing to open up,” Breeding said. “The older kids, it takes a little bit longer to trust you and open up to you.”

Breeding said once a student does work up the nerve to ask for help, it’s important for counselors to engage with them, even when their issue seems overblown. The perspective born of age and experience that helps separate irritation from full-on crisis is often in short supply among students.

“We listen to them and we demonstrate empathy,” she said. “Sometimes we say, ‘OK, I understand that this is really a big deal and this is really worrying you, but this is normal and this is what kids go through. So let’s talk about ways we can handle it together.’”

“They’re growing and experiencing things for the first time. I always try to put myself in their shoes back when I was that age. I’m glad they have resources here that they can go to because back in the day that wasn’t here. It was just, ‘Hey, that’s life. Get over it.’”

Brother Richard Sanker, CFP, has been a counselor at Catholic High School in Little Rock for 36 years. Over that time, he said, the challenges of growing up have become increasingly complicated, challenges which lead students to his door.

“Something that comes to mind is the structure of the home,” he said. “There’s so much more division in the home, so much more divorce in the home these days. Many times, I deal with students who are at their father’s house this week but the mother wants them at her house and there’s that back and forth. That’s definitely increased over the years and that is obviously the source of a lot of pressure.”

Conversely, Brother Richard said there are elements of the job that are exactly the same as when he started. The kids who seemingly have everything going for them are still often the ones hiding the most pain. He still summons students to his office with subtlety to better preserve their privacy. And the very foundation of his counseling ministry is as clear and straightforward as it’s been for these many years.

“The underpinning is love, counseling out of love,” he said. “Each person has dignity; each person is important. That’s the basis for the whole thing.”