Counselor pounces at chance to help
Staff writer
Stepping into her office, it becomes clear that elementary school counselor Kris Burkholder has two great loves — the Kansas City Chiefs and leopard print.
On Friday, Burkholder wore a red Chiefs sweatshirt with a leopard-print helmet in the middle, leopard-print shoes, and Chiefs earrings.
Her phone had a leopard-print case on it, and leopard-y furniture was scattered around the office — a lamp, a chair, a cushion.
A pink Chiefs thermos sat on her desk, though this was sadly lacking in leopard.
Burkholder’s love of the Chiefs is not surprising for a Kansan. (She and her husband, Kevin Burkholder, have season tickets, and attended Saturday’s victory over the Texans.)
Her love of leopard print is a bit more mysterious.
“I don’t really know how I started loving it,” she said. “The kids say my favorite color is leopard.”
Much as a wild cat roams the savanna, Burkholder has roamed many schools around the state, working as both a teacher and a counselor.
After receiving her teaching degree from Arizona State University in 1991, she taught English and drama at Marion High School.
There, Burkholder said, “kids would come talk to me about different issues, and I would try to help them through.”
Wanting to better assist her students, she received a counseling degree from Emporia State in 1996.
Afterwards, she took work as a counselor at Hope, Remington, and Herington schools, working with various age groups.
She returned to Marion as an elementary school counselor in 2009 and has been working there ever since, even filling in as middle or high school counselor when the school can’t afford to hire another one.
“That was always my goal, to get back here and be a counselor,” Burkholder said. “I had little kids at the time, so it was nice to be on the same school schedule as they were.”
She begins her day at 7:15. After morning assembly in the gym, she spends the rest of the morning checking in with students.
“I have kids that I see every day,” Burkholder said. “Some of them I see on a regular basis. Some of them pop in.”
Her role as an elementary school counselor is to aid students with developmental needs, whether social, emotional, or academic development.
Burkholder might meet one-on-one with a child whose parents recently have gone through a divorce or with a group of children who have difficulty controlling their anger in the classroom.
“A big part of my job is listening,” Burkholder said. “Sometimes a child just wants to be heard.”
Some might wonder whether a counselor for such young students is necessary. Should that not be the role of parents and teachers?
School systems have prioritized mental health more over the years, Burkholder said, which has led to the hiring of more counselors.
That, she added, is a good thing.
“Kids can be more successful [with counseling],” Burkholder said. “If a child is in the classroom and can’t concentrate on math because they’re worried about these things that are going outside of school, about friendship issues, or if they’re going to get food that night at home, or if mom and dad are fighting… they can’t succeed academically until they get some of those needs met.”
Having a school counselor present from a young age reduces the stigma surrounding talking about feelings.
Burkholder noted that her elementary kids worry much less about being seen in her office than high schoolers do.
“If a student walks in here and other students see him, it’s not a situation where it’s ‘what’s wrong with you?’” she said. “It’s just a normal thing.”
Burkholder also helps her students with careers — a bit odd, considering they’re all younger than 11.
Her work in this sense mostly involves exposing students to the working world.
“One of my jobs is to introduce students to different professions and start helping them with skills that are going to help them be successful,” she said.
Burkholder makes use of her teaching degree throughout the day, dropping into classrooms to teach about the difference between tattling and reporting (good question!) and whether disagreeing with someone is the same thing as bullying (no!).
Asked about over-counseling — the idea that putting too much emphasis on mental health might cause students to think they have problems they don’t — Burkholder shook her head.
While school counselors can recommend that someone sees private counseling, they will never diagnose anyone with a mental illness, she said.
“I can talk to parents and say, ‘This is what we’re seeing with the student,’” Burkholder said. “I can’t say that I think a student has this or that.”
A counselor’s approach, it would seem, is far more reactive than diagnostic.
“If a student is getting angry and they’re lashing out or saying something inappropriate or hitting the desk or slamming their head down on the desk or whatever, we work on different strategies and interventions that they can do,” she said. “It may be breathing techniques; it might be learning to tell the teacher, ‘Hey, I need to take a break.’”
While a teacher’s day ends at 3:40 at the middle school, Burkholder is usually caught up in meetings until 4:30.
Before then, she will spend her afternoons in her leopard-printed office, meeting with students as they drop in and out.
“A big part of my job is relationship-building,” she said. “Kids are not going to trust me until I build that relationship with them.”
A leopard’s spots protect the creature, camouflaging it against the dappled shadows of the plains.
Burkholder uses the pattern in a similar way, helping students feel safe in her quirkily decorated space.
Perhaps that, above all, is why she loves it so.
“I can never take away my leopard print now, even if I didn’t like it, because the kids identify it with me,” she said. “It’s so fun.”