Caleb Suhy views the Counseling Page on the CHS website to get more familiar with the services they provide. He says he hopes to utilize the counselors more.

The Counseling Center is adapting its services to COVID-19 as a result from this year. According to Director of Counseling Rachel Cole, the regulations that accompany the pandemic have posed many challenges to the counseling department including class sessions or frequent student check-ins.

“We’ve looked at changing our programs a lot to adapt to COVID-19. Overall, our goal hasn’t changed, how are we going to be supportive and intentional in helping our students?” Cole said. “Before we could physically interact with many of our students, but now we have to think differently on relaying this message out to our students especially with kids here every other day, or some fully virtual.”

One of the main ways the department has made up for the lack of ability to physically interact with the students is by offering more online resources as well as playing a more proactive role in checking in on them.

“We’re trying to be more proactive on tracking students we know are currently having difficulties at home or who are coming in to speak to us and then look at trends to better cater to it,” Cole said.

Junior Caleb Suhy says this more active stance has definitely been noticed among students.

“It was nice to get frequent emails from my counselor that provided us resources and checked up on all of us,” Suhy said. “I think it’ll be really beneficial for a lot of students including myself knowing we have someone to talk to during such a hard time.”

According to Cole, this proactive stance is especially important as the infrequency of student presence can emotionally distance many students.

“It’s easy for students to think that counseling is not accessible to them, especially so we’re trying to make things easier for them to reach out,” Cole said. “I just hope everyone knows that if there’s anything they are feeling stressed out about–academics, social media, COVID-19, peers–please reach out to a counselor. We’re here and trained to help.”