School Counselor, Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District

>> So my name is Christina Sunada, and I am a school counselor. And I work actually at my old high school. Pretty much, that's where everything gets dumped on us. So we do everything from mental health therapy with kids. We don't go too in depth, but we're a safe place for kids to come that are stressed, that are depressed, that are having an anxiety attack. And then we do everything -- Like today, I was working on scheduling, just trying to make sure every kids' schedule is ready to go for school starting in two Mondays. We also do -- I'm also the safe school counselor, so I do see a lot more of the students that have mental health issues going on, and I also see the students who have been busted because they've been caught with drugs or alcohol on our campus. So that's kind of the gist of the day. It's a revolving door of students and teachers coming in and out of our offices every day. Most of the time, the sessions look like they'll come in crying and want to just talk about she said, he said, I like him, I like her, but they don't like me, and we'll just kind of process through, well, you know, how else can we see, did this person really mean that or are you reading it through the text messages, are you really having a conversation with the person or are you just reading between the lines. So we try to coach kids in order how to talk with their peers and also how to talk with their teachers, how to talk with other staff in a respectful way, but also getting their points across too. So that's the majority of my sessions. They are just life training sessions, I would call them, with students, trying to help them understand the high school setting and also their own hormones and feelings and things like that.