TRI-LAKES AREA — Cindy Williams has taught several things during her career in education, but for the last two years she has served the students at Glen Rose High School in a different capacity. She is the school’s guidance counselor.

A graduate of Watson Chapel High School, Williams, 46, is a daughter of Louise Cagle and the late Odell Cagle of Watson Chapel. She attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville where she received a bachelor’s degree in speech pathology and elementary education. Her first year of teaching was divided between two school districts in Madison County; she taught speech pathology three days a week in Huntsville and two days in Kingston. The next four years were spent teaching speech back in Washington County in the Prairie Grove School District.

“During those five years, I attended night school working on a degree in counseling,” she said. “I graduated with my counseling degree from the University of Arkansas in 1990.”

Williams and her husband, Ken, then moved to Malvern, where she became the guidance counselor and he, the band director. She worked for one year in the Carthage School District after it was consolidated with the Malvern School District in 2004. She then went back to Malvern, where she stayed until two years ago, leaving there after a total of 18 years. Her husband is still the band director at Malvern.

“I love Glen Rose,” she said. “I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven. We’re like family here. We’re very close. I feel just right at home here.”

Williams said her main duty is to help students.

“I try to make sure students have a place to come, to feel comfortable, to be able to talk and get things off their chests,” she said. “After listening to them, I try to get them back to class and their learning. I try really hard to make each child feel like he or she can come to me. I have an open-door policy not only for the students but also the parents, and teachers, too, if they need to vent.”

Another of her responsibilities is to “help the seniors figure out what they are going to do after high school.” Williams said there are approximately 90 seniors this year and approximately 350 students in grades nine through 12.

“I start to get to know them better in their junior year, and by the time they are seniors, I know them pretty well,” she said with a smile.

The counselor’s office is also responsible for getting the students’ report cards out. Williams’ office is in charge of activities relating to Career Action Plans - CAPS - as well.

“In this program, each student has to have a mentor or adviser,” she said. “I have activities once a month and they’re not always geared toward graduation or careers. Some are geared toward social and personal activities and others, toward academics.”

Another tool Williams uses for the students is the Kuder Career Search Web site, www.kuder.com.

“This is introduced to our eighth-grade students through the career orientation class,” she said. “This software is used to assist in curriculum development and assesses student career interest areas. The assessments are given to students during the last nine weeks of the school year. The results are printed and become part of each student’s four-year high school plan.”

Williams said her administrative assistant, Patty Ellis, is responsible for keeping the Web sites that are used by the counselor’s office.

“Anything I come across, we post on the counselor’s Web site,” she said. “We have links to just about every college in Arkansas as well as links to financial-aid sites.

“Patty is wonderful,” she said with a smile.

As a member of the Arkansas School Counselors Association, Williams networks with other counselors in the area.

“We attend two conferences a year where we share ideas,” she said.

She just recently attended a workshop about the Arkansas Lottery Scholarship, which is the same as the Arkansas Challenge Scholarship, she said.

“That’s going to be an excellent resource for our students,” she said.

Williams and her husband have two children, Grant, 16, and a student at Malvern High School, and Grace Ann, 12, a student at Glen Rose. The family is active at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Malvern.

“We are pretty involved with things there,” she said.

Williams said most of her spare time is spent “running the kids to soccer and piano.”

“But I was able to do volunteer work this past summer at a pregnancy crisis center, Breath of Life, in Malvern. That was such a blessing,” she said, adding that she likes to travel, “but I don’t get to do that very much.” - crolf@arkansasonline.com

Tri-Lakes, Pages 60 on 11/19/2009