The first thing to notice about her office is the paintings. All different shapes and sizes, they are lined up with loving care against the walls and windows, awaiting only a hook to hang from. Landscapes, still lifes, portraits, they add a bloom of color to the otherwise sparse interior. After all, it is only her first week on the job.

Smiling, Mary Anne Modzelewski acknowledges the paintings as works of her husband, Steve.

“He was my soul mate,” Modzelewski said. “We were married for 26 years.”

Modzelewski, recently arrived at Clayton High School from a job as a college counselor in Albuquerque, N.M., is here to fill the previously-vacant spot of CHS college counselor. Ms. Modz, as she has her students call her, grew up in St. Louis and attended Washington University before embarking on a teaching and counseling career that has spanned several states and decades. From New Mexico to Illinois to Missouri, Modzelewski is well acquainted with the ins and outs of college counseling, especially with the lesser known side of the job.

“I feel, as a college counselor, that my job is to help people through transitions,” Modzelewski said. “College counseling is much more than just sending off those applications for colleges. I see college counseling as really more about life counseling, about looking forward, ahead.”

However, Modzelewski is not at Clayton High School merely for the position. She is also here for more personal reasons.

“I believe in helping students through transitions, and I, personally, am undertaking a huge transition,” Modzelewski said. “I’m here because my husband passed away in September of a brain tumor. It was diagnosed this past summer, so it all happened very quickly.”

Steve Modzelewski was an art teacher at the Bosque School in Albuquerque, N.M. After his passing, his wife decided to honor his memory by passing on his love for the arts to the students.

“We created an art show to raise money for scholarship funds,” Modzelewski said. “My husband had thousands of drawings. He was a very prolific drawer. I had 56 drawings to represent a year in his life, and we sold the drawings to raise money for the scholarship fund.”
In addition to the memorial fund, Modzelewski described the loving care his school took to memorialize her husband.

“He had this art project where he had his students make these birds to hang in the atrium of the school, and so they created a permanent sculptural project in his name,” Modzelewski said. “My husband’s students came to his bedside in the hospital to pay him tribute and their love for him. The soccer team was actually in the championship, and after my husband died they wore ‘Remember Mr. Mod’ on their jerseys in the championship game.”

Once the funeral and memorials were over, Modzelewski immediately went back to work, relying on the support of her teaching community to help her through the difficult time.

“As a college counselor, it was right at the beginning of school,” Modzelewski said. “So as I worked with my students, my counselees knew that I was going through this, but I did take care of every single one of their letters. Before I left, everybody had a place.”

With the completion of the semester at Sandia Preparatory School, her previous school, Modzelewski looked to return to St. Louis, to reconnect with family and friends. She felt that the return, although it was made painful by her deep love for her students, was a good place to begin a new chapter in her life.

“What’s so lucky for me is that the reason I wanted to come back to St. Louis wasn’t because I wanted to leave my students and Sandia Prep, because I really loved them,” Modzelewski said. “It was because as I was going through this transition and this great tragedy in my life, I was able to find a place here, and that allowed me to come home. So it is very meaningful for me to be here.”

Despite only being at the school for one week, Modzelewski is already very pleased with CHS, especially the counseling program.
“I’m totally thrilled with the counseling model here at Clayton High, the fact that it’s kind of a transparent model of counseling,” Modzelewski said. “I love that at Clayton High, the student is at the center of the educational process, and that’s the way I think it should be.”

To her, being a college counselor is much more than finding a good college. It’s about helping each student successfully navigate the waters and plan out their lives.

“Seniors, juniors, they’re full of anxiety and possibility and problems and issues and things that come at you,” Modzelewski said. “My job, as your counselor, is to be there to help navigate and help guide you through a maze of possibility. What is the right thing for you? How do you find your bliss?”

Although she misses her husband every day, Modzelewski hopes to use her experience to further enhance her counseling and her relationships. She is not shy about her feelings, and openly welcomes any inquiries or consolations anyone wants to give.

“I think that going through this hard period of time has already deepened my counseling,” Modzelewski said. “I think that what I’m dealing with is something that you can use to teach. It’s sad, but there are some strange miracles in loss. I’m working on that. I think it’s important that anyone who knows me, and that includes student and staff, knows that it’s okay to ask me about it or how I’m doing because I really feel that I’ve been given some strange gift or ability.”

To further elaborate, Modzelewski explains that her perception of life has increased, which is something that she can hopefully pass on to her students.

“What it means is that I, myself, practice what I try to help my students understand about life,” Modzelewski said. “You never know. I didn’t know that at the beginning of this semester I would be at Clayton High School. Everything about my life has changed in the snap of a finger, but what I know is that everything is going to be all right, even after the worse that’s happened.”