Counseling services in the Cape Girardeau School District will be enhanced in the coming school year when Jefferson Elementary counselor and National School Counselor of the Year Olivia Carter is promoted to a districtwide position.

The school district announced last week Carter will serve as its new counselor support specialist, effective July 1. She was named 2021 National School Counselor of the Year in December by the American School Counselor Association based on her counseling innovations and programs, her leadership and advocacy skills, and her contributions to student outcomes.

In her new role, Carter will provide direct support to counselors throughout the school district’s five elementary schools as well as the district’s middle school, junior high school and Central High School.

She will also be responsible for expanding the use of trauma-informed and restorative practices, which, she explained, is a method of reinforcing positive behavior and developing appropriate “community culture” in the classroom.

“A restorative practice is the opposite of traditional discipline, an alternative to suspensions, missing recesses and lunches with peers,” Carter said. “Traditional discipline practices have been leaned upon heavily in some areas because it’s immediate and not time consuming, but research has shown it’s not effective.”

Through restorative practices, faculty and staff work to create peer relationships with students to discuss the harm negative behavior can cause as well as solutions to rectify negative behavior with a goal of creating a “culture of empathy within schools,” Carter said.

All schools in the district have various levels of restorative and trauma-informed practices in place that will “strengthen over time,” she said.

Carter’s additional responsibilities in her new role will be to serve as a liaison between school counselors and the district’s central office and to analyze data to help ensure all minority student groups have access to proper tools for academic success.

“We are proud of the progress we’ve made, but we realize the importance of prioritizing areas we need to expand,” district superintendent Neil Glass said in commenting on Carter’s new role. “Who better to lead us in this work than someone with Ms. Carter’s credentials and dedication to her students and families?”

Carter is in her ninth year as a school counselor, including four years in the Sikeston, Missouri, school system and the past five in the Cape Girardeau district.

She was named Elementary Counselor of the Year by the Southeast Missouri School Counselor Association in 2019. In October, she received statewide recognition when the Missouri School Counselor Association selected her to be the Missouri Counselor of the Year,

A search is underway for Carter’s replacement at Jefferson Elementary.