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At 15, Sarah Skemp knew she wanted to be a school counselor. Although she liked her high school counselor, he wasn’t the impetus for her career choice. "I liked education and I like helping people, but I didn’t really want to become a teacher,” she said. “I clearly remember telling a friend I wanted to be a school counselor and she said, yeah, you'd be good at that." The path wasn't direct and it took her through many states. Sarah grew up in Wisconsin and earned her undergraduate degree there. At the time, becoming a school counselor required teaching first. She decided on where to apply for a teaching position in a unique way. “I threw a dart at a map and it landed in Texas,” she said. She taught fourth graders there and then traveled to California to earn her graduate degree. After a stint in Albuquerque, she eventually came to Arizona, drawn by the promise of desert heat. For 19 years, Sarah was a counselor at Lake Havasu High School, and came to a realization that would define the next chapter of her career: elementary counseling mattered just as much as counseling teenagers. Her high schoolers were often academically strong but underprepared for the interpersonal side of life. "They were missing the skill sets of getting along with others, dealing with conflict, working as a team, self-regulating,” she said. “We have foundations in math and reading. We need foundations for the emotional part, too." That conviction - and her involvement in AzSCA - eventually led her to Jack Daley Primary School in Thatcher, where she's now spent five years counseling 400 students ranging in age from preschoolers to second graders. A fellow AzSCA member in the Thatcher School District had been the only counselor serving the town's four schools. When a school safety grant opened the door to counseling at younger grades, she jumped at the chance to work in Jack Daley Primary School. The Thatcher school board believed in the work enough to commit to keeping the positions funded even after the grant runs out, she said. Ask her why she's effective at the job, and she points first to the teachers who let her sit in on their classrooms early on, allowing her to observe how they organized a room, held attention, and engaged their students. But mostly, she said, it comes down to something simpler: "I really love kids, and I think that comes across." Sarah lights up talking about her students, calling them adorable, curious, and refreshingly free of the peer pressure that shapes older kids. "They are always up for the next big adventure,” she said. “They give me hope." Sarah’s been active in all the committees of the Board at Large (currently she’s on the Research Committee) and was chair of AzSCA during a particularly challenging time - the COVID pandemic, a period she describes as “survival mode” for students, teachers, staff, and AzSCA alike. When she isn’t working or advocating for her profession, Sarah is an avid traveler. Once the pull towards the unfamiliar sent her chasing a dart on a map to Texas. Now she has trips to New Zealand, Thailand, India, the UK, Italy, Switzerland, and France under her belt - proof that the sense of curiosity and adventure that she admires in her young students lives in her as well.
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