 Greetings everyone, I am James Milan and this is Talk of the Town. Today I get to speak with Scott O'Brien. Scott is a new member of our high school community, has just come in and taken the position of assistant director for high school counseling and we talked a little bit before about how his title is still to be ultimately determined but the important thing is he is in charge of the counseling department in the high school that's what we want to talk to Scott about. We always like to take opportunities like this to find out a little bit about somebody who's new to a position or new to the town in this case it's true in both of those instances. So I want to start by just thanking very much Scott for coming on into the studio. Thanks for having me, I really appreciate it. We appreciate it, it's not easy to get away from the high school I don't think right during the school day that's for sure. Very busy. Yeah absolutely. So I do, I warned you that I would ask you know a little bit about you personally but we do with these Talk of the Town interviews in which again somebody is new to a position in town. We do like to find out a little bit about well your journey, how you got here, etc. So if you wouldn't mind just talk about yourself a little bit. Sure. So basically I started working in mental health as a clinician at UMass in Worcester. I worked on a lock psych unit for about eight years and in the meantime I'm getting my master's degree in school counseling and I already had my teaching license. I was certified history teacher first and really found a fascination with psychology and helping adolescents through really tough times. So ultimately after going to grad school at Assumption University I was able to work at a high school in Franklin Mass for the past 13 years and from there the school counseling position was fantastic. I loved the work I did. I worked with mostly 11th and 12th graders and then ultimately a position as the head of guidance became available and I worked in that position for many years and the assistant director of high school counseling position in Arlington opened and I saw it as an opportunity for change and growth for my own personal trajectory and ultimately I am extremely happy to have this opportunity to work in this awesome town. Well I'm glad to hear you describe it as such. I wonder how much did you know about Arlington if anything before this position came up? Sure. I've always since my move to Boston which originally was Fenway and then Brighton I've always had this connection to this part of the state. I love the area. I love the fact that there are so many people on bikes and walking and access to so many community resources that it just was a lucky chance that this position and this town came available. Well that's cool. Has it increased, decreased or not changed much at all your commute to move from working in Franklin to working here in Arlington? Well now that I live in southern Boston it has increased quite a bit but it has increased my opportunity to listen to some good music, NPR, some great podcasts and you know it's a good processing time for me as well. That's great. Well I hope that it continues to be that way because that you know often times commuting is one of the harder parts of whatever job that we have so. All right well let's talk about the job itself and I will just digress to say that we share interestingly quite a bit of history I think literally because people may know I was a high school teacher myself for a long time in a very small school in which I did a number of things, a number of things that you also do and I also taught history. So with that kind of nice little connection there let's proceed to talk about the work that you do because my understanding of the counseling department and the counseling positions in a school as large as Arlington High School is that it is a crazy job in a lot of ways with a lot of different components to it. So if you can just kind of explain what it is, what is the work, your work of course but also the work of the counselors that you supervise within the counseling department. Yeah one of the most positive experiences that I've had so far is seeing the guidance of Dr. Holm and Superintendent and her mission to increase awareness and practices and resources for students throughout the entire district no matter if they're the highest achieving student or most struggling student. It's empowering to work under leadership of people who are dedicated to making sure that we focus on social emotional learning, other people known as SEL or multi-tier systems of support MTSS and making sure that there are appropriate staffing and resources for our faculty and staff to empower our students because that's the goal. In the end the mission statement is about making sure that we empower all of our students to have growth and joy and to be able to become contributing members of society. Yeah I mean I think those acronyms that you just mentioned you know the SEL, MTSS, I'm even sure I got that right. People may gloss over such things because we all get a little tired of hearing acronyms in a sense but the goal as you have described it is healthy students right and having a good worthwhile constructive productive experience when they're in school and validating experience when they're in school and so I know that that is a commitment that I have no doubt that you share along with everybody else who works in the department you oversee now but what are the challenge you know I mean there are a bunch of challenges that I can think of but you're the expert tell us what are you know what are you up against in a sense. Yeah so the department I work with, the seven school counselors and the many social workers at the high school are all such incredibly skilled people and talented at what they do and have been doing it many of them for a very very long time and so sometimes we need somebody to come in and look at the programming and decide if some things need to be tweaked some things need to be updated and that's kind of my role is overseeing and making sure that we're running smoothly and we have the most up-to-date information and resources for our students and families and caregivers. So I can see that that's what you need to do and you know and I know what it means when you say people have been at the work for a long time because in a lot of ways obviously on the positive side that means they have tremendous amount of experience and have worked with a whole variety of students and situations etc on the other hand right we both know that you know me being you know in my 60s now also I looking back realize that you know the last 10 15 years of my teaching I did a lot of the same thing over and over again and we all get used to that. So it sounds like it's part of the challenge of your particular position that you need to work with and support people who you know you may be suggesting changes and they're not used to those. Yeah and it's mostly working as a team making sure that I'm there supporting everybody and getting receiving feedback as much as I'm giving it so and in that manner we all learn a lot from each other. So I want to talk a little bit more I mean again you just outlined you know what your own goals again as the director of this department are going forward and kind of what what what your mission you know is in that way but tell us a little bit more again to step back for a second consider your own you know work in Franklin and you know again the work of the counselors who you're working with. I'm thinking okay you've got college admissions which is always you know one counselor 200 plus students etc that sounds like a challenge to me. You have SEL in general which is social emotional learning as you said and I know that that is again in our current world a particular challenge and then you have all of the detritus unfortunately like all of the effects and ramifications of the COVID years which are still being worked through. So those are things that strike me I'd love for you to address any or all of those and any other things that you know that again just will give people a sense of okay if if they think about what is a college counselor sorry a high school counselor's job you know entail they'll they'll have an answer. So there's a lot of programming and there's a lot of roles that school counselors have that no one knows about a lot of what we do is done in the background and actually if we're doing our job the best that's how it works the students are supposed to be in school to be learning and getting the material and curriculum from the teachers for that to occur smoothly you have to have a really great school counseling department to help run the programs that are required to help students in their post-secondary planning it's required to have a good school counseling team to help the students who are having crisis or even small mental health concerns a lot of students come in to the high school with having some some major setbacks at home if sometimes if they have a home so we're the ones that are there to to really take in the students that are not able to fully function in the classroom setting and assist them in receiving the appropriate supports and from there it could be a counselor could be as important as somebody whose job it is to triage and decide which step happens next for that student and who they see and what resources are necessary and which specialists they get referred to all while meeting with that student who has the application into Harvard and needs assistance with the essay or their SATs mm-hmm yeah I mean it again it's it gives one a sense of the breath of the work that you do so if if students are well let me ask a couple of other questions of just about the kind of the composition of your department I think you said that there were seven counselors correct and so do it obviously the high school counselors who are working around college admissions with students might work with some students in their junior year and certainly do in their senior year but I imagine that that's not that that burden is not spread out over all seven it's not like all seven have juniors and seniors going to college that they're working with or do they yes every counselor has grade 9 through 12 and it's all split up alphabetically oh I see yep okay so so basically you just take take the total number of students go alphabetically in sevenths and that's how you have your your load yeah and it's important for us to keep consistency and make sure that the counselor has the siblings of a student who comes through or making sure that the counselors have those students for four years is very important because it's all a building process all throughout and making sure that the counselors get to know the students really well even though they have large caseloads they still get to know every single one of their students okay that that also clarifies something for me that I was wondering about because you had mentioned before we went on air that the school's population is now up to 1600 and that includes an influx of just a hundred new brand new students transfers new immigrants etc and so I'm doing some quick math there 1600 to 7 counselors 20 220 230 something like that and but at least they're not trying to deal with 230 kids trying to get into college right so that there's some proportion one assumes that there's a rough I a roughly equal balance among the classes right that they have about as many ninth graders tenth etc but still that's a whole lot of things to keep track of yeah I'm wondering if I can ask you personally to speak or ask you to speak personally to your experience in Franklin and then by extension or by proxy what people are also dealing with here in Arlington in terms of COVID in terms of what you noticed in your work through those years and since that that time I mean it's obviously had a major impact on just about everybody which means that a student is impacted by a parent or a student is impacted by a parent's employment possibly a student's mental health has definitely on the spectrum has had some significant changes some students have gotten through it with great resiliency some students built resiliency during COVID and the pandemic so yeah again it's all different per student and that's why we hold our jobs so individualized per student and how we get to know them so well and their backgrounds and their histories and their family histories and that's why it's so important to have smaller case so caseloads which the students the counselors at Arlington high school have under the the prescribed maximum caseload recommended by the Massachusetts Association of School Counselors or the American Schools Counselor Association but as you just described we just had a hundred plus students transfer into the high school bringing us over 1600 students at this point so that growth I don't see it stopping anytime soon so we keep a very close eye on it and maintain those caseloads yeah and I guess at some point you have to one assumes you'll have to think about expanding the department if this continues in this way because as you said even if they're under the maximum of what's advisable or allowed or whatever it's still with what we've just with all the rest of what we're talking about it's daunting and again I go back to the leadership of Arlington school district and those communications have already started so the there's a proactive level that we have already taken to make plans for that to occur once we hit this benchmark this is the next step instead of waiting till the case loads get too big or something major happens we already have a plan for it so that's the best part yeah and a great a great illustration of what you were saying before about what makes you know makes it easier to do your job and just better for everybody involved in terms of leadership when you have leadership that understands these things and that is proactive about seeing where things are going and how to prepare for that exactly that's that's really very very good I am wondering now about how much of your time or the time of a counselor in the department is spent with families as opposed to students great not as opposed to but in addition absolutely we try to make ourselves completely available for parents to come in and speak with us directly or over zoom we have already had a senior parent night this year which went wonderfully we had a great turnout I applaud the parents who attended and those who didn't reached out and they were able to come to a virtual coffee hour the next day and I assume sorry I assume that that senior that that parent night that you've had already if it's happening in the first few weeks of school it's all about college mostly yes it was it was listing basically letting parents know the resources that the counseling office had for them for the year getting ready for their child out there last year in high school okay right so you're right that would involve other things as well but I think obviously we know what the elephant in the room is at almost all times and something that we were actually talking about with a couple of colleagues of mine before we went on air is just that idea of what where college fits into people's lives now and obviously Arlington prides itself with good reason on our school system and it's pretty uniformly excellent from elementary school right through to the end of high school I think again it's another draw about this community for a lot of people as you were just alluding to the transfer students would would kind of indicate that as well but you know colleges and for everyone or college right away may not be for everyone how do you how do you communicate finesse how do you deal with with that in terms of the expectations the collective expectations around college versus the experience that you know that from the the students that you've dealt with over the over time well in Massachusetts luckily students have the ability to choose a high school a public school option that they are allotted and and the students who know at at early ages that they can go into the trades or vocational programming they have the choice to go to Minuteman which is wonderful and there's also adult programs afterwards so if Arlington high school students decide to go into the trades as well there are many programs that they can take there after high school as well so those opportunities are there but in the developmental stages that the students are in in high school they're still trying to figure that out so a lot of our students tend to choose post-secondary plans as far as four year college goes we do have some students who go into the military we do have some students who decide to go into the trades and some students take a gap year and we're there and ready for any of those things and it can come as late as the end of their senior year we're there to help them plan but we are giving them those resources from day one at in ninth grade helping them start to really dive in to figure out what they would like to do next because high school is only four years it sounds like a long time but it's really not yeah it's something that again you get to my age and you've got a long way to go before that but one of the things you realize as time goes by is that you know hours in a classroom or something like that can go by very slowly days or weeks might but decades just like that right so high school as you said it's gonna be over before folks know it and obviously that's something that you have to be aware of at all times in as a perspective that you're bringing to the conversations that you're having with students who don't yet recognize that so another challenge or opportunity I guess for you to connect with these young people which is always a lot of fun hey I've been I have been quizzing you basically a lot about your work let me ask you you know what is it that you first of all if you'd like to share any of your own vision or hopes or dreams dreams you know the hopes or aspirations around your this new position that you've taken number one and number two is there anything that you want people to know either because their upcoming events that people should know about anything anything that you'd like to share with the audience sure well just off the top upcoming events next Thursday is financial aid night for see let's put a date on that that's October 5th maybe mm-hmm okay yeah cuz never know when people are watching what we're what we're 6 30 in the auditorium at the high school okay October 5th 6 30 auditorium high school and it is financial aid night okay that's an important yes it is my very things have changed a bit this year with the FAFSA so it's important that parents are and guardians and caretakers are making sure they're paying attention to those changes yeah that's really good to know especially for parents who've already been through this process but if the process has changed they need to know that especially absolutely we at the high school have been working very diligently to make sure that we're focused on every student making sure that every student has time with us making sure that the counselors are getting into the classrooms they had senior seminars all week last week and the week before teaching lessons offering time to help students with the college choice the application process the essay writing components and so that has gone really well and going forward we're looking at making sure that all students have the resources they need and the comfort level that they they possess to come to the school counseling office when the next phase of the school building is complete we'll be moving into our new offices which are much more central and we just want to make sure we're accessible to all students even if it's for the smallest thing we love seeing our students we love making sure that they have access to us for anything they need yeah that's gonna be a I think a big essential change there if you guys are right in the middle of things because as you know our our high school is a sprawling thing and it's gonna be a lot easier to navigate for most of the time that you're here than it has been for the last 15 years or so where it's been a true labyrinth and I think that that would have you know if if getting to one's counselor was hard literally just tough to to do between classes or in your free period or something like that I'm sure that was a major disincentive so I think that that that this sounds like a really it's nice just that you'll have you know nice new offices etc but also the location of them sounds very promising I have one last thing to ask you about and that is we have spoken on various occasions with the director of social and emotional learning for the schools there and I'm just wondering about SEL like how is it that you work together with the SEL department so to speak in the high school yeah my supervisor Mowgli Olander is in in charge of a lot of the components of SEL and school counseling for the entire district and we work hand-in-hand and we're very simpatico when it comes to making sure that the programming is appropriate for all students and making sure that there's a nice flow from the elementary to the middle to the high school in that all services are available to all students that need it and making sure that parents are aware of that and community members so that we can make sure that our students are leaving after they complete all the way through 12th grade to be productive members of society well you know you mentioned this as one of the things that you you know when you were talking just about the job generally you know 20 minutes ago or so near the beginning of our chat that that piece of simply trying to be available to every student wherever they are on the spectrum of financial need mental health you know you know where they are on this in the spectrum mental of mental health where they are developmentally etc that all by itself is an astonishing in some ways aspiration right because you do have 1600 people and there are many many many different positions that those that those 1600 kids would occupy along various spectrums right I don't really I'm not I don't have a question to ask about that I do want to recognize that is you know if you are doing that well and you feel like you're on top top of it enough that is quite an accomplishment all by itself so kudos to you thank you it's a school-wide effort so that's how you create a well-functioning department and school system all right well I want to thank you very much again for your time I'm we genuinely appreciate it and you know as I said good to get out of the school building sometimes we're not far away hopefully we will see you again and be able to catch up as things start moving forward in your time here absolutely it was my pleasure thank you very much thank you I have been speaking with Scott O'Brien he is well we'll just say he directs the counseling department at the high school and it's a busy man we really appreciate his time we appreciate yours as well thank you so much for being here I'm James Milan this is talk of the town we'll see you next time