Dr. Kimberly Guess

I would say my parents, because I was always brought up - I have two brothers - but we were always brought up to where, you know, whatever you do, you do it well. Do your best. I watched them both throughout my life. My dad was military until he retired, and my mom was a nurse, so I watched her go through school as we were growing up. Having those two terrific role models really shaped who I became and how I approached my career. They taught us to give 100% to everything we did, and that foundation has carried me through my entire professional life.

Change the things you can, and change your attitude about the things that you can't. I use this advice myself all the time. You're going to have to be a little bit flexible, especially in education where things change constantly, and pretty much in all jobs things change. So you've got to be able to be flexible and still give 100%. It's about accepting what you cannot control and being adaptable while maintaining your commitment to excellence.

Take it one day at a time, and be prepared for change. You have to have someone that you can vent to - someone you trust at work who understands what you're going through. There are times where I just go into the counselor's office and it's like, oh, I can't, you know. And you've got to be able to work with a team as well. You have got to be team-oriented in anything that you do. Unless you have your own business and you're at the top, you need those relationships. Even then, if you're at the top, you still have to interact with somebody if you want business. Having that work person who lives the same day-to-day experience and knows who you're talking about or knows the situation is so important for success.

One of the biggest challenges, especially with being a professional school counselor right now, is that we are limited in what we can actually talk about with children. This changed just this year. Before, if a child came in and said they feel like they're going to hurt themselves, we would be able to talk to them and do an assessment. Now, we can't even do that - I've got to call your parents right away. So many things are being taken away on that counseling side, the things we actually went to school for. Really and truly, I would say counselors, at least within Texas, we are more academic counselors now. The social-emotional part has kind of been taken away. We can't talk about certain topics with students anymore - if a child comes in wanting to discuss something, I almost have to tell them, oh, I cannot talk to you about that, I'm sorry, let's just call your parents. I just feel like educators are forced to almost set our children up for failure, our students, because there's some things that we cannot do. We teach to a test, so social skills are lacking. And really, the social skills, if they don't have that when they go out into the real world, they're done. Everything you say used to be confidential unless you said you're going to hurt yourself or someone else, but that's no longer the thing anymore. That right there can cause people in general to lose trust.

I would say being ethical just always doing what's right. If you can't, you know, you've got to strive to do everything that's correct, because things can go badly if you don't. It's about having a moral barometer, knowing the difference between right and wrong. Things can go wrong, but if your best intentions are doing it right, and you know that you've got to then correct the wrong, that's what matters. Ethics guide everything I do.