St. Charles Parish public schools received many awards this year to distinguish it from other districts in the state.
Among those receiving awards was Louisiana High School Counselor of the Year Anitra Boyd at Hahnville High School.
Boyd was selected from a group of counselors across the state who have made outstanding contributions as counselors or to education with special emphasis on the school counseling profession.
Boyd has been a counselor at Hahnville for the past three years and served as a counselor at J.B. Martin Jr. High School for four years prior to that.
She has also been the technology chairperson for the Louisiana School Counseling Association since 2008.
“I’m excited and I’m appreciative, yet humbled by the entire experience,” Boyd said. “When I found out I was nominated I was just grateful.”
Ronnie Seal, ninth-grade administrator for Hahnville, was one of the people to help nominate her for the award.
“I wrote a letter of recommendation based on the outstanding work she’s done here,” Seal said. “She meets with these students individually to help them start focusing their courses around their future plans so that the students are taking very relative courses to their interests.”
Boyd said she believes one of the best things she’s done as counselor at Hahnville is bring back Career Day for freshmen.
“It was a big task last year, but it paid off because it ended up being really, really successful and we got a lot of support from inside and outside of the community,” Boyd said. “The biggest thing for me is that I always want to make the connection between what you’re doing in school and how it is going to play into real life in corporate America.”
She plans on hosting more career days for the freshmen throughout the year.
Boyd said that her relationship with students is most important to her.
“As (the students) put it in their words: ‘Mrs. Boyd, you are as real as it comes,'” she said, adding, “I pride myself in that I relate to my students and they relate to me.”
Wendy Rock, past president of the Louisiana School Counselors Association and fellow counselor at Hahnville, said that Boyd always gives out correct and helpful information.
“If she doesn’t know the answer she’s going to go find out the answer if she has to ask 10 people,” Rock said. “When she’s advising the kids for their future, whether it’s military, four-year or two-year college, or the work force, she makes sure she has all the correct information for them.”
Rock added that she also enjoys having Boyd as a coworker.
“She’s always 100 percent behind the students and supporting them,” Rock said. “She’s energizing. She’s motivating to me. She always makes you want to do better. She keeps a positive atmosphere and she’s a great colleague to work with.”
When counseling, Boyd said she emphasizes to her students most that their current actions will affect their future.
“It’s more than just school patterns that (the students) are setting now with their behavior, it is a molding for what type of citizen they will be,” she said. “If you are only doing what you have to do, then you’re not good enough for me.”
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