Counseling Corner

Welcome to the Counseling Corner!

New for 2026, the Farmington School Counseling office is thrilled to launch our official School Counseling Office Blog, “The Counseling Corner”—a dedicated space for students, parents, and educators to find support, resources, and insights related to all things School Counseling!

Our mission as school counselors is to support the whole student, acting as a bridge between a student's personal well-being and their academic success. While much of our work happens behind office doors or in classroom workshops, we intend to bring helpful conversations directly to your screen. Whether you are navigating the stress of the college search, college applications, looking for ways to support your child’s emotional growth, or simply seeking a little motivation, this blog is for you.

What to Expect in Future Entries

In the coming months, we will dive deep into the topics that matter most to our school community. Here is a sneak peek at some of what we have planned:

• Academic Success & Study Skills: We’ll share strategies for time management, overcoming procrastination, and finding a study routine that works for you.

• College and Career Readiness: From demystifying the college application process to exploring "best-fit" career paths, we’ll provide information to guide your journey after graduation.

• Mental Health & Wellness: High School can be stressful, so look for tips on managing anxiety, building resilience, and practicing mindfulness. We believe that mental health is just as important as physical health.

• Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): We will explore how to build healthy relationships, resolve conflicts peacefully, and develop strong communication skills.

• Parenting Partners: Dedicated posts for parents on how to support their teens through the unique challenges of the high school years.

Your journey through school isn't just about grades; it’s about discovering who you are and who you want to become. Our passion is to help you explore this.

We are so glad you’re here, and we can’t wait to get started! We invite you to check back often, share these posts with friends, and reach out if there is a specific topic you’d love to see us cover.

Always in Your Corner,

FHS School Counselors

____________________________________________________________________________________

New Post Alert! 

Dr. Netcoh, our Extended Learning Opportunities Coordinator, shared the following insights on how to spend your summer months!

Summer: Time to Rest and Recharge While Also Building the Future You Want

Listen, I get it. After a long year of 7-hour school days, exams, projects, clubs, sports, part-time jobs, and other activities, you deserve some time to rest and recharge over the summer. You should definitely take time to sleep, travel, hang out with friends, and participate in activities you genuinely love. All of these things will help you return to school in the fall refreshed and ready to thrive during the next year. 

With all that said, summer also presents a perfect opportunity for you to begin building for your future. For many of you, the busy schedule during the school year makes it incredibly difficult to have a part-time job, shadow a professional in a field of interest, volunteer in the community, or explore a career through a summer camp or program. These types of experiences are not only strong college application and resume builders but an excellent opportunity to develop professional skills and help you figure out what careers you want to pursue in the future. 

This post will help you understand how you can benefit from different types of summer experiences and provide resources to help you identify the many ways you can engage in career exploration and development this summer. 

Job Experience

Even if you don’t plan to work at Stop & Shop, a summer camp, or Lake Compounce for the rest of your life, having a summer job at any of these places can help you gain valuable skills and experience that will transfer to other workplaces and help you better plan for your future. 

Let’s say you want to become a doctor. The customer service and interpersonal skills you gain while working in a restaurant or at an amusement park will definitely help you communicate more effectively with and treat patients in the future. Or maybe you want to be an engineer in the future and design parts for spaceships and airplanes. Any collaboration or teamwork skills you gain from working at a grocery store or a summer camp would translate to an engineering job that requires significant coordination among multiple professionals and departments. These types of skills and experiences can be highlighted on your resume to demonstrate how you are prepared to succeed in future job and internship opportunities. 

Having a summer job will also help you figure out the types of work you like and those you don’t like. Maybe you learn from a job in a grocery store that you don’t like working with the public. That will help you narrow your career search to professions that are a little more “behind the scenes.” Or maybe you learn from your summer camp job that you really like being active and having different tasks to do every day. That experience can help you rule out “desk jobs” and other professions with more repetitive tasks like coding. All of this knowledge you gain from a summer job experience can help you better plan for your future.  

In addition to these benefits of a summer job, it also doesn’t hurt to put a little extra money into your pocket! 

Job Shadowing

Often, the best way to learn something is by seeing it with your own eyes and experiencing it firsthand. As a high school student, it is difficult to gain direct work experience with many jobs you may want to do in the future. Licensing requirements, age restrictions, and professional competition prevent teenagers from getting direct experience in fields like engineering, plumbing, and social work. Therefore, job shadowing becomes the best way for you to learn about these career areas and whether or not they are professions you might want to pursue in the future. 

Job shadowing is essentially “hanging out” with a professional for a day or an extended period of time to see what they do for their work. Even taking just one day to shadow a professional over the summer may help you see that engineers do more desk work than you expected or that electricians do more math than you ever want to do. These observations can help you make more informed decisions about what classes you take in the future or what careers you decide to explore in more depth through internships or other experiential programs.      

Summer Camps and Programs

There are a ton of great programs and camps in the area that are relatively low cost (or completely free) and can help you explore different career fields and make professional connections. 

Girls Who Code offers a variety of free programs for students to explore the field of computer science and gain skills that serve as the foundation for a variety of tech-related careers. The Real Art Ways Eye on Video program gives students an opportunity to learn about screenwriting, film production, and editing under the guidance of local teaching artists. The CT Summer Transportation Institute (CTSI) at CCSU introduces students to civil engineering, particularly as it relates to land, air, and water transportation, through hands-on labs and field trips. 

These and other camps and programs allow you to gain hands-on experience and industry-specific knowledge and skills in career fields of interest and are a great way to learn whether or not you would like to explore a profession further in the future.   

Volunteering

Serving your community through volunteering has many benefits as a summer experience. First of all, community service has become almost an essential part of any college application. Colleges want to see that students are actively engaged in their communities and service-minded. The best way to demonstrate this engagement to colleges is through extended commitment to volunteering in your community.  

Volunteering is also an excellent way to build your resume and develop a variety of skills for the future. Interested in a construction career? Volunteer with Habitat for Humanity to gain experience and skills with various tools and aspects of the construction process. Interested in teaching, psychology, or social work? Volunteer at an FPS summer program to gain experience working with children and developing skills to effectively communicate with young people. Regardless of what volunteer opportunity you choose, you will almost certainly develop skills in collaboration, communication, and problem solving, which you can highlight on your resume and college applications.

Resources for Finding Opportunities

The FHS Career Center website has a number of resources to help you find valuable summer experiences. The 2026 Summer Opportunities pages lists a variety of camps, programs, volunteer opportunities, and internships organized by career area. The deadlines for many of these opportunities have already passed, but it is worth checking to see if there are still any openings for this summer or at least familiarizing yourself with what will be available next summer. 

The Volunteering page has a list of organizations that have taken FHS volunteers in the past. Many of these organizations will still be looking for volunteers, so it would definitely be worth contacting those that are of interest if you are looking for a service opportunity this summer. Websites like Indeed and Idealist are also good places to find businesses and organizations that are actively looking for employees and volunteers. 

Finally, your own personal network can be a great resource for finding opportunities like jobs and job shadows. Check in with your parent(s)/guardian(s), their co-workers, their friends, your neighbors, and your friends’ parents to see if anyone in that network works in a career area of interest to you. Having personal connections increases your chances of finding an opportunity to explore an area of interest.