After 11 years of teaching English and College Applications at SDA, Carolyn Lee is taking a new approach to helping students starting next year. Instead of teaching concepts or guiding seniors on their path to college, Lee will become SDA’s fourth school counselor due to the increasing student body.

Lee says that she started this journey in 2007 when she went back to school to earn her masters in school counseling, which she then achieved in 2009.

“More than anything, it was teaching college aps [that] made me realize that that’s the direction I wanted to go, of being able to work with kids one on one and then help them move to the next step in their life,” Lee said.

Her passion for helping kids is what inspired her to become a teacher and later decided that counseling is really what she wants to do.

“Just being able to work with kids for four years rather than just for four months is what really excites me about it.”

Lee will work in the counseling office full time and it has not yet been determined who will take over her previous classes or what her responsibilities as a counselor will be.

Her main goal as a counselor is to help students figure out what path they want to pursue in life in order to keep the tradition of SDA’s unique aura alive.

“I’ve never wanted to leave SDA which is why I’m so excited to get the counseling job here,” she said. “It is the culture that we’ve created of acceptance and really just being authentic.”