After nearly eight and a half years of serving as the Pupil Service and Attendance Counselor as well as the Homeless Liaison for San Fernando Valley’s second-oldest high school, Shirely Shamsi is leaving to take on a new supervisor role elsewhere.
In her role as Pupil Service and Attendance Counselor and as a Homeless Liaison, Shamsi’s job, as put by her, was “working with students that had barriers in their lives.”
In her day-to-day work, Shamsi’s work consisted of counseling students with mental health issues, helping get the proper resources for those who needed clothes, housing and food, and making sure students graduate on time or would refer them for continuing education or alternative schools.
“I would collaborate with all the Counselors, the Deans, Teachers, the Special Education Coordinator, and even the Nurse,” said Shamsi.
Her dedication and commitment to students’ well-being didn’t stop there. Shamsi often worked on establishing and building trust with students and their families to better help them.
When reflecting on her job, Shamsi mentioned how much she enjoyed working with students and their families, administrators, and all the staff. While she felt fulfilled coming to and from work every day, her greatest fulfillment, however, was “touching people’s lives and making a difference,” she said. “When students graduate, they come back and visit and tell me how much they’ve done…it’s icing on the cake for me to see them doing so well.”
While Shamsi will no longer directly interact with students and their families in the same way she used, her new position means she will be part of the hiring committee, will evaluate staff, and will be supervising over consolers and help guide them on how to deal with different circumstances reaching as severe as “suicide assessment” according to Shamsi.
Although she pictured herself retiring in her role here, she made the difficult decision to leave the school. She is “looking forward to making a difference in a bigger way” in her new supervisor role and with her, she brings a fresh set of ideas and techniques she learned from eight and a half years here that she plans to implement.
As a final farewell before she transitions to her new position, Shamsi said “I will miss everyone. I want to thank everyone for being so supportive and loving to me all the years I have been there. Thank you all so much.”
