Jessie's Blog

On a Sunday afternoon in January, I got the call from my husband who had been skiing with our youngest two kids.

“Aaron crashed,” my husband said. “Come quickly. I don’t know how bad it is.”

I sped to the ski area. By the time I arrived Aaron had been discharged from first-aid and was propped up in the passenger seat of my husband’s car. As his Dad carefully removed his ski boots and slid on his winter boots, he said, “It’s his right shoulder.”

Aaron sat, tears running down his face, right ar…

During the Q&A at an NJACAC conference a few years back, a counselor asked, “What do you do with a student who has written about a particularly hard topic? Maybe they were abused, their dad died (or golden retriever) suddenly, their grandma is incarcerated, or they are dealing with a mental illness...and, well, it's just not written in a way that will serve them?" After a bit of back and forth, I added to the discussion, “Every student has something they absolutely need to write about. There ar…

Aaron and I. September 2017. Move in day at Stratton Mountain School. #gosms #skifastaaron Photo Credit: Dad

Does it get easier? clients and friends will ask, referring to the school drop-off. We have four children: boy (23), girl (20), boy (13), girl (11). We call them the "Bigs" and the "Littles." (But only one husband!) We’ve done the drop-off, the send-off, the lugging of rugs and small fridges and the fretting about bedding with three kids so far for a total of nine times.

And, did it g…

Delia, a bright-eyed high school junior, sat in my office. “You saw my transcript?” she asked in a cringing tone. “I’m trying harder. I’m working on that.”

I had reviewed her transcript. She clearly had the best of intentions. Her freshman year, though, was killing her confidence, not to mention her GPA. One B, 3 Cs, and 2 Ds. She had a 2.3, brought up only by a solid B in an elective. Her sophomore year she had brought up her average to a 2.6. As Delia planned on applying to highly competitive…