Mandi Smith, 

My path into school counseling began after three years as a high school teacher, where I witnessed firsthand the profound impact that educational equity and mental health support have on student success. That experience led me to pursue counseling as a way to serve students more holistically. For the past two years, I have worked as a credentialed high school counselor, combining academic guidance, social-emotional support, and data-informed programming to improve student outcomes.

After earning my degree in animal science and working in zoological education at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, I began my teaching career as a CTE Veterinary Science instructor. My students earned Veterinary Assisting Certifications, and as an FFA advisor, I managed a working animal husbandry farm on the high school campus and coached students for Career Development Events that apply classroom skills to real agricultural careers through academic competitions.

Amid the pandemic, I stepped into a district Research and Critical Thinking role serving ninth-grade students at a Title I high school. By providing targeted push-in support in ELA classrooms, 85% of my students demonstrated measurable growth in their standardized reading and writing scores. Here, I created a custom curriculum and provided additional materials for the most commonly missed benchmarks. After relocating to Los Angeles, I served as a long-term substitute College Preparation instructor and college advisor at a public charter school, developing curriculum in financial readiness, university navigation, and career exploration for a cohort in which every student was admitted to a California four-year university.

During graduate school, I completed a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) track, earning over 280 supervised hours in adolescent therapeutic conversation that combined cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, solution-focused brief therapy, and motivational interviewing. At my high school internship site, I conducted an interpersonal relationships 6-week small group by interpreting schoolwide data to determine specific prosocial needs and created a curriculum to match these targets. When the program concluded, there was a 96% increase in the belief in their ability to maintain positive relationships with peers and adults. At the middle school level, I created an academic skills group for eighth-grade boys focused on organization and study strategies, while also managing a caseload of students with 504 plans and leading individualized intervention meetings.

Presently, I serve as a high school counselor at a rigorous high school environment where I am comfortable with high-stakes communication and parental involvement. Together, our team is seeking to qualify as a Recognized ASCA Model Program, spending the previous two school years attending quarterly LACOE ASCA trainings towards the development of an ASCA-aligned comprehensive school counseling program. I created one of the two lesson plans to be submitted for this distinction, using ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors for our 9th-grade class and pre-/post-data to determine percent growth and identify areas we can enhance as our program evolves. I have been asked to advise other grade-level data collection and interpretation. Additionally, I helped develop and pilot an academic intervention to reduce the number of 9th graders with multiple D’s & F’s in alignment with an ASCA Annual Student Outcome Goal, which resulted in a 24% reduction in multiple D/F grades per student and a 57% decrease in students earning a D or F.

In addition to my core counseling duties, I serve as the liaison for the Wellness Center therapists, creating additional mental health outreach opportunities and programming. As a member of the Suicide Prevention Task Force, I am responsible for attending district-level meetings to improve crisis response protocol, suicide prevention lessons, and risk assessment tools and procedures. I have been deployed twice to middle and elementary schools to help deliver grief and trauma interventions after losses in the school communities.

I strive to leverage my experience as both a teacher and counselor to build proactive tiered systems of support that identify and assist students before challenges escalate. Having worked in a variety of school communities, I bring a broad, equity-centered perspective to problem-solving. With my background in high school settings, I deeply value the foundational work happening in middle schools to develop the academic, social, and life skills that shape responsible, resilient young adults.. and I am eager to contribute to that mission.