Alice Morrison

Two 15-minute conversations. This is the average amount of time CHS guidance counselor Alice Morrison spends each year with 225 students planning, solving and discussing.
“You would think something like having a conversation about classes for next year for 225 of you, one after another for almost a month and a half, you would be like ‘are you kidding me?’ But every single one of the conversations brings up another area we should think about or plan for in a proactive way,” Morrison said.
While these sessions are short and may outwardly appear solely as planning for future classes, Morrison feels that they also provide her with perspective on the Clayton culture and student success as a whole.
“It’s just amazing the amount of students that are bright and motivated and hardworking. And to think that they’re going to go off and be really successful … It just reflects the types of students that you get in this type of education. They can hardly help but be successful,” Morrison said.
Morrison has been a widely appreciated source of guidance for Clayton students for —– years now, her exceptional ability to connect with student’s thriving as a result of her first profession as a teacher. Morrison studied at University of Missouri and went on teach biological science in Rockwood School District.
“In counseling, what landed me here is that I was in the classroom and loved the classroom. You build relationships with students that you see every single day, day after day. But I was really doing a lot of counseling from the position of teaching. So I started taking classes and found my people,” Morrison said.
Although her job consists of mending the struggles of students on top of her own, Morrison claims this is all part of the job that she could not possibly love more.
“I constantly have to be learning and doing and thinking and collaborating. That’s what counseling is; reacting to emerging things that come up all the time. You have to stay on top of it. And then you get a group of students that you transition from eighth grade and follow with them to with almost young adulthood. It’s the best. I’m not kidding you. It’s the best,” Morrison said.
Morrison has spent the past three years cultivating a relationship with the current CHS sophomores, and is preparing for a bittersweet goodbye as she prepares to retire at the end of this school year. As she approaches her final weeks, she asserts with no uncertainty that her love of the job has not dwindled in the slightest.
“[My year] has been interesting in a lot of ways and challenging in a lot of ways,” Morrison said. “You know, students have had a lot of interesting challenges and opportunities, but the thing about this job is that every day I wake up and still really love it.
As far as her parting, Morrison has been working diligently with the rest of the Counseling Department to fill the void in a way that makes sense for the current sophomore class.
“We’re thinking about lots of things because it gives an opportunity to say, ‘who do we want that fits the best in the community?’ That’s really important. But you know, there are amazing people out there and I feel like we’ll get somebody that’s going to be pretty good,” Morrison said.
Although Morrison believes there will eventually be a replacement guidance counselor, she is not worried about the success of her sophomores, as she feels they have been given all the information over the past two years that they need to move forward into their final two years of high school.
“I thought carefully about the rotation and about what made the most sense of when to leave. Once we have the junior, senior plan, [the sophomores] are no longer adjusting to the high school,” Morrison said.
Although she is parting with one passion, Morrison looks forward to exploring many of her other passions in her retirement.
“It’s not like I have a plan to go off and be a counselor at another place, necessarily, but I have a lot of things that I would like to do, maybe some things internationally,” Morrison said. “I travel and backpack do those kinds of things. I’d love to be able to do some more stuff in the community that I haven’t had time for.”
Morrison emphasizes that although there are certain activities she is looking forward to in retirement, there is not one thing that she prizes the most because she is interested in anything and everything. As far as exploring these activities, Morrison plans to devote herself to life in retirement as she would to her current job.
“I’ve been given the gift to be able to finish one career and then open the doors of another, that’s pretty amazing,” Morrison said.
Although CHS will be sad to see her go, Morrison has left an everlasting mark on the students she has cultivated, and she can safely say they have left a mark on her as well.
“To see the change from an eighth grader to a high school graduate, it’s like watching birth to three or four. Every day there’s something new, every day something evolving and it’s a privilege to be a part of it and to be to watch it and to be able to stay with a class over time.”