The Counselor:Student Dilemma
By Vivian Ramirez Rodriguez
Going to any public school in the Bay Area, specifically East Bay, meant your classroom was guaranteed to be at least 35 kids. Now, in elementary school this wasn’t too drastic as your teacher would eventually get to know you and things would settle into a stronger bond. The problem came in 7th grade… the first year of middle school. A couple issues come to mind–the introduction of gun incidents and fights followed by police presence, the distribution and usage of drugs also summoning police, and the most jarring of all I think were my peers, the same ones I’d known gone to kindergarten with, changing right before my eyes not just physically but also associating themselves now with colors, dropping out or having to move away because of their choices. You’d think with issues like these there'd be extensive counseling and resources. The answer unfortunately is no, but we did have 2 counselors! A great addition on the district’s part except they were each accountable for over 200 students, creating and distributing class schedules, attending to teachers, and parents, and then of course failing to do any or all of these things. I think my classmates and I all knew they weren’t the best people for the job, considering the most one ever lasted was two years–this was also the case with principals. I thought my 7th grade history class of 40 was bad until two of my teachers began implementing weekly screaming meltdowns containing threats of quitting but resuming class like nothing had occurred the following Monday, this also lured in police.
I was convinced my situation was normal, as around me it certainly was, and for all I knew college was merely an expensive dream. The first day of high school was one for the books as I was greeted with no building in sight, only portables. Flooding bathrooms, majority substitute teachers, and a completely outdoor school with potholes and no gymnasium combined with now more developed issues that I’d faced in middle school were thrown onto me suddenly. The district kept the 2 counselor rule though! Except now there were over 1200 of us.
One of the core memories I have of high school was when I was a sophomore and a senior came into my class late, distraught, having just met with their counselor bearing news he’d just informed her she wouldn’t get into any UC after refusing to take an AP course. The counselors were renowned for ignoring emails from students and somehow getting everyone’s course schedule wrong and not fixing them until halfway through the year. We didn’t have mental health counseling or onsight psychologists–your best bet was with the P.E. a teacher that also had a business selling snacks in the girl’s locker room.
All of this combined made for a very lonely college application process leaving everyone to fend for themselves. Some of my best friends ended high school never having gone through a full year of math, and likewise for the teachers that ended up leaving for their own mental health’s sake. We deserved encouragement and at the very least a counselor that listened to our stories and vouched for us no matter the grades or academic interest. My story or even what happened at my school wasn’t uncommon, the students of West Contra Costa Unified deserve justice.