Annette Hanson, last names Sk-Z. Photo courtesy of Julie Weltens.

Q: How long have you been a school counselor?

A: I have been a school counselor off and on for many years. I have been in let’s see, this is my 23rd year in education and this is my 11th year of school counselor and second year at Cedar Park.

Q: Have you been in the education system for a while?

A: I’ve been a middle school teacher, I was a private school principal, I was a district counseling coordinator, a school counselor, so I’ve worn lots of hats.

Q: Were you a counselor at another school?

A: Yeah, I’ve been a counselor, my very first counseling job ever was Manor High School and I was a counselor at Round Rock High School, a counselor at McNeil High School and I was the counseling coordinator for Round Rock ISD.

Q: Did you go to college and what did you major in?

A: Yeah, so undergrad, my major, I went to UT Austin and I studied Applied Learning and Development, which is their way of saying elementary education. Basically I was an elementary education major and then, when I went back to school to get my master’s degree, my master’s degree was in Educational Psychology.

Q: Is there anything, I don’t want to put the other schools to shame, but is there anything better about being a counselor here at Cedar Park?

A: Yeah, so that was kind of an interview question, like when I was interviewing for this job, actually. It was like, ‘why are you even choosing to interview with us?’, ‘What brings you to Cedar Park High School to make you interested in wanting to have a job here?’ When you interview for a job, you do a lot of research, looking through the websites, looking through social media accounts for the schools and stuff, and what drew me specifically to the school was, it seemed to be very student centered without ever stepping foot on the on the campus. Like, I remember when I was looking at the school’s social media accounts and even the school website, it was everything was highlighting students. It was highlighting, everywhere, and it wasn’t just the athletes it was like students that were excelling in all different kinds of areas within a school. I mean, there was a, I remember looking and there was a big piece that was published on like the welding classes and I was like, that is so cool that it’s not like always national merit kids or it’s not always if you win a state championship, but, what are these kids doing in the classroom and highlighting them like what they’re building and stuff? I thought that was really, really cool. So it just seemed like it was a place that focuses on the students, that sounds like a place where you want to be.

Q: Did you do anything other than school and education?

A: I’m an army reserves veteran, and so there was school there, so I was like a preventive medicine specialist, I went to school training for that, but as far as my professional career, it was just undergrad and graduate school.

Q: How would you say being in the army reserves helped you with your career?

A: It exposed me to people of very diverse cultures, like when you go to basic training and there’s young people from all over the world or at all over the country, not the world, but the country that are there for a variety of different reasons. You just meet a group of people that you might have otherwise not met, which is really cool. I think it taught a lot of discipline and like organization and time management because it’s very regimented and so going through all of that, it definitely helps to make sure that everything is neat and orderly and done, efficiently and things like that.

Q: Could you tell me about your journey to becoming a school counselor?

A: Yeah, so I was a middle school teacher for almost 6 years and when you teach secondary school and middle school and high school, you have 125, 140 kids and you see them very briefly, for one period a day.
It really hit me that kids that had other stuff going on that limited their ability to reach their potential in the classroom. When I only see those kids once a day for 40 minutes or something, there’s nothing I could really do to help them. In education, we have this thing that’s called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and it’s basically a triangle and you can’t move up the triangle to reach the pinnacle until the layers beneath are fulfilled. So the layers beneath are like safety, security, shelter, food, love, and care. All those things are basic human needs and so you can’t expect a child to be able to come to school and learn if they don’t have food at home and if they don’t have a stable family life at home. I can’t really be an efficient teacher if my students aren’t in that position on that hierarchy of needs where they’re ready to learn and so I was like, well, ‘how can I, what can I do to help kids be ready to learn?’ So that made me kind of shift my thinking into school counseling, to see if I could help kids with those kinds of other needs, so that when they do go to school, they can reach their potential in the classroom.

Q: You were talking about your journey as a counselor, was there anything else that made you decide that you wanted to be a counselor?

A: I did not have fun in high school. I did not like my high school experience at all and so I think so, I mean, I graduated high school early, not because, it was just , ‘oh, I could, let’s get out early,’ but it’s because I hated high school so much. I didn’t have a great experience with kindness and respect at school and there were definitely bullying behaviors involved. High school’s hard enough as it is, you know, you don’t need people to be treating you poorly and all that stuff. So I think that was always an impetus for me to go in education period, just to be in a place trying to make sure that kids are going to be in a learning environment where, you know, they can be happy and healthy and not have to like, and be able to advocate for kids who might be treated unfairly or unkindly at school. I think that kind of pushed me into this field in general, like just, you know, why I go and education versus anything else.

Q: What does counseling mean to you?

A: I think I see school counseling because school counseling is different from therapy, right? So sometimes people say, ‘oh, you’re going to counseling’ and they interchange the words, counseling and therapy and so, like school counselors, we’re not therapists. So, we’re not those people that are going to be able to help somebody long-term with things that they might need therapy with. For me, a school counselor is foundational, it’s like a totem pole, right? A counselor is more, we’re kind of, we we’re at the bottom of the pole, but we want to help support to make sure it’s that whatever we’re trying to hold up, which would be like our students, that they have everything that they need to succeed, whether it’s just knowledge, maybe you just need to know about something and you didn’t know about something to make the right choices later on. Just sharing resources, sharing contacts, but it could also be finding referrals for kids, kids that need therapy. We can help them connect the dots with finding a way to get services outside of school. I feel like we’re kind of like a jack of all trades, because we, school counselors, do a lot of things academically, like transitioning from middle school to high school, transitioning from high school to college, making sure you’re getting everything done in high school that you need to be successful here so you can reach your secondary goals or your career goals or whatever your goals you have after graduation. We also help support kids and families with all their mental health, crises or if they just need guidance or if it’s we don’t do therapy, but we definitely do crisis response. So when something happens and we’re there to help the kiddo work through that and then, you know, so they can move forward. So it’s like a blanket kind of like let’s hold, what can we do to make sure that everyone is covered, right, with what they need to be able to do other things?

Q: What’s your favorite part about counseling?

A: I like that I get the kids that I work with. I get to get to know them or on a personal level and I said when I was a teacher, it was like they come in and kids go and you teach them content and curriculum, but you don’t have a chance to get to know them like as much as people because it’s bell to bell and there’s a lot to teach and what the state says you have to cover and all the things. I like that I get to know kids on a more personal level. What I don’t like is that I don’t get to know all of them. As a counselor here, I have over 400 kids and I don’t know all 400 kids by name and face. The ones that I do know, it’s nice to be able to get to know them as people and not just as students in a content area.

Q: And with that, how do you prepare yourself emotionally to deal with students and their experiences?

A: Yeah, so, I think it’s important if you’re going to be a school counselor, especially at a really big high school to have your own support system and your own way to self like for self-care and things like that because it’s a lot. It’s emotionally, it can be emotionally taxing and emotionally draining because there’s, you know, the other thing is school counselors have something that, it’s called confidentiality and so we’re not allowed to tell people. A lot of times we sit here with this information and we don’t have that permission to tell and that can weigh heavily. These are things that you take with you when you go home and it’s really stressful and emotional, because you’re wearing all of this and you can’t tell anybody about it. It’s just really important, I think, like my safety net, my husband, my kids, they just know I have a stressful job. That time for self-care and the time to do the things that I needed to decompress, they give me that. So I think that’s great that you like to have people or pets or somebody. That gives you that kind of just like area to breathe because you definitely need it in this job.

Q: Do you have any routine or steps to de-escalate situations or anything?

A: It’s so funny, I do like facials and like spa treatments. So once a month, all year long, even in the summer when we’re not in school, I take self-care through like having a spa day once a month and I love to travel. Traveling for me is a time to decompress and, you know, just unwind and things. So I love traveling. I do that as much as I can and yeah, and once a month I treat myself.

Q: And then what about for your students?

A: For my kiddos, like to help them decompress? Like those are more things that are more clinical, right? So with kids, I can teach you breathing exercises, muscle tension exercises, we could talk about journaling, things like, we have fidgets that we can give you to put on your computer and stuff so people don’t realize what you’re doing. There are these stickers with texture on them and you can do kind of designs and breathe and stuff like that. All the counselors, we have these gel ice packs in our refrigerators. You can also train yourself on doing certain things or like having your toolbox. In your toolbox, you might have your sour candies and you might have your you know, make sure you have your earbuds and you might have your exercises that you know how to do, so that’s the sort of thing that we would teach kids on how to de-stress.

Q: How do you make your students comfortable, like is that how you decorate your office?

A: Totally. So I try to and it’s interesting, in graduate school, there’s like a graduate course that you have to take on, or at least I had to, every university is different, at UT for educational psychology, you have to take a course that has to do with things like, ‘what is your office base like?’ You learn different things, like what kind of an environment might make someone feel more comfortable and relaxed versus real energetic or sad or something.

Q: You said you deal with 400 students, have you ever shared an experience with a student?

A: Yeah, so if it’s in a therapeutic setting, then no, because that’s kind of a no no, like we’re in counseling, in a professional setting, it’s something that isn’t appropriate. So the goal to work with a kiddo would be to help them push through or work through the conflict that they’re having, whether it’s an internal conflict or an external conflict. Professionally, you want to put everything on the person you’re working with and help them to figure out how to make this a better situation. I think the only time I’ve ever used a, I do do this frequently, I guess, in the academic piece, I share a lot about the process of applying to colleges or I have a kid that’s a junior in college and, to me, that’s more like, ‘hey, let me tell you how we navigated through that.’
To me, it’s not like counseling, it’s more like academic guidance, especially for families that might be their first kid getting ready for this transition after high school and they just don’t know what to expect.

Q: When you were in high school, did you visit the counselors office or anything like that?

A: I did not. So times have changed when I was in high school, it was, I think my generation and generations before, you only went to your counselor just for college stuff and that was it, like you didn’t, you know, I never even met my counselor until maybe right before I graduated, just to do like my early grad forms and that was all. You know, going to college is a lot different than now, it wasn’t as competitive. I think it’s harder to navigate the college system now with all the applications and all the different things. So yeah, I’d never, like honestly, I never really met my counselor or my assistant principal or anybody.

Q: What’s the most important thing you want students to know?

A: That my door’s always open. I think that’s for all of us, like the counselors, we wanna make sure that you have a pass, but our doors are always open, which is the most important thing. I don’t want students to feel like they can’t come and talk to us and I want them to understand we do have that confidentiality, like that this is an open door space for anyone to come in and they don’t need to be scared about what they say. As long as it’s not one of those three things, like ethically and morally, to tell somebody, then just know that this is the safe space because sometimes you just need someone to vent. It’s a place where if they just need something, it could be a snack, it could be a place to vent, it could be a place where they really need help and they know that maybe they aren’t ready to tell someone about it and they know that it’s a safe place for them. That’s I guess that’s what I want them to really know.

Q: What is the most important thing you want students to know about yourself?

A: I would want them to know that I’m always going to try my best to help them out. I am only human, so mistakes happen and also I don’t know everything. Sometimes I might need time to learn myself, like if you’re needing help with something and it’s something I’ve never had to help a student with before, then it’s gonna be a journey that we take together. I’m in it 100% to help you out, I just might not have an answer for you right away. I will try to do my best to make sure I can help you with anything that you need help with, but just know that I could be learning along the way as well.

Q: Would you say you’re introverted or extroverted?

A: Textbook wise I’m introverted, because I get my energy from downtime, I need that I need downtown to recharge my social battery. So it’s like textbook, but I love to go to dinner parties and be out socially, I like doing that. I just don’t get my energy from that. I love being around people, but I need to be by myself to re-energize.

Q: What do you do outside of school, what are some of your hobbies and interests?

A: So I love to cook. I hate baking. Baking has to be precise and cooking you could just do it with love and like a dash of this a little of that, but I love, love, love to cook and traveling is definitely one of my big things. From August to the Super Bowl, I guess, like football I’m a huge football fan. So I don’t have a favorite team although I know I hate the Cowboys. I will root for whoever’s against them and football’s always on in our house always during the season, so I love football. I love listening to music and I know I’m a huge dork, but I’m a big swifty.

Q: And, what are some of your favorite tv shows and movies?

A: I like to binge. I don’t really watch television, unless it’s a football game, but like right now there’s a show called Matlock that I really like with Kathy Bates, who was in a bunch of old Stephen King horror movies, and now she’s in this TV show, it’s really good. Only Murders in the Building, I like that one. There’s a show on Netflix called The Diplomat that I really, really liked. I guess after mentioning those three it is kind of like shows have strong, like lead women characters, I guess I kind of gravitate towards that, but also the Great British Bake Off, watch that all the time and Chopped and all the Food Network type stuff. If it’s cooking shows or shows or a series that have strong lead women characters, I think.

Q: Any movies?

A: So, when I was younger I think I would go back and rewatch, like, I can remember if I would go back to my old self when we had DVDs and we had, if I flipped through my DVD thing from like years ago, it was like Legally Blonde and rom-coms, Sweet Home Alabama, Reese Witherspoon kind of romantic comedies or Sandraulo, romantic comedies. Those probably would be all my like old DVDs that I had and Grease is awesome and Dirty Dancing and that whole kind of like, yeah.

Q: Who would you say is the biggest influence on your life or career?

A: I would totally say my parents. It sounds so cheesy, but it is totally true. My mom didn’t finish, she only went to elementary school, she didn’t even have a high school diploma. She’s an immigrant and so the country where she was at, where she lived, school was only compulsory till like elementary school. After that, you had to pay to go to school and her family was super, super, super poor. She’s Korean and she had older brothers and so her parents only paid for the brothers to go to school and none of the sisters could go to school. She’s an incredibly smart woman with no formal education so growing up, you see the difference and, just having an education, what that does and what it doesn’t do. My dad has a high school diploma and he went straight into the military. He was an infantryman in the army, and he’s just had to work like his career, like his work has just been hard, physical, labor. I’m proud of him, but seeing like, that’s just hard. It is so hard. They’ve always supported me along the way like, if you don’t want this hard physical labor, you have to go to school so I would say they’re definitely my people.