By Melanie Arriaga, Jonathan Lau, Leila Talbot
After filling in as a substitute counselor over the last year and a half at Galileo, Ms. Talbot is now a permanent addition to the counseling department as Counselor – Social- Emotional Supports & Stakeholder Partnerships.
allowing her to provide emotional support for a wider range of students.Ms.Talbot had previously held two temporary positions as a substitute counselor from 2019-2020 up until the start of november, but was offered the permanent position of counselor focus by assistant principal, Ms. Kiss, in order for the department to be recognized by the American School counselor Association.
Ms. Talbot is extremely happy that she now has the opportunity to be a full time member of the counseling staff. She says, “I am super excited. This is my dream job and I feel awesome!”
According to Ms. Talbot, her new position gives her the opportunity to fulfill all of students’ needs and provide academic support. In doing so Ms.Talbot ensures that the counseling department is doing its best to keep in touch with their students and employ student surveys to determine how they can better the counseling department
In addition, Ms. Talbot’s new position consists of making students’ access to information easier, by creating things like a quarterly newsletter about what counseling is up to, giving feedback on advisory councils, and getting feedback from students on their needs.
While for now, a permanent position means an increase of more emails and zoom meetings, Ms.Talbot hopes that post-pandemic her job will become more interactive and eye-to-eye with students to create a more personal environment. Her goal is to create small groups where individual students can receive additional academic support.
Overall though, Ms. Talbot is proud to be part of the Galileo counseling department because she believes that Galileo is one of the few schools in San Francisco that prioritizes its students when it comes to counselling; students can actually make an appointment with their counselor and meet in a timely manner. She says“That’s the beauty of Galileo, it invests in counseling, most caseloads are higher, Galileo is under 300 students per counselor that the students have time with their counselor, strong leadership, strong administration that supports.”
In addition to being excited about being able to help more kids now that she is a full time counselor, personally Ms. Talbot is also happy to be able to have more involvement with her daughter, who is currently a senior at Galileo.
Ms. Talbot attributes her accomplishments to her children and family stating,” I am very proud of the fact of being able to be a mom. That was always my dream… having two amazing kids and being very nice people. I owe that to my mom and husband. I have a lot of support around me that has led me here. I don’t think people don’t become who they are alone, they are the sum of people that they have been connected to’.
