Guiding Greatness

The young man towers over her. He is such a nice kid. He’s tall. Maybe 6-foot-4 inches.  His father is dead and his mother is in jail — for murdering his father. He’s just been arrested for possession of marijuana. Guidance counselor Becky Wiseman has to tell him he is going straight to jail this time. He’s not mad that he got caught.

He’s ruined because he couldn’t imagine himself in jail. That place wasn’t supposed to be for him, the place where his mother is. And it’s Wiseman’s job to give him advice, then send him off to the detention center. It breaks her.

She shuts the door and cries. But she doesn’t stay behind that door for long. She has to pull herself together. She has a job to do.

*   *   *

Over ten years later, her office has humble decorations. Family photos, colorful tiles. A lamp in the corner replaces the harsh, institutional lights in the ceiling, creating a warm glow within the room. Centered at her desk, Wiseman leans forward onto her elbows. And smiles.

“We all have a story,” Wiseman said. “We all have things going on in our lives.”

She listens to young people’s stories, but she doesn’t internalize them.

“I’m there with them,” Wiseman said. “And I’m there beside them but I can’t absorb that because it’s not fair for them and it’s not fair for myself.”

She doesn’t take the stories to heart because they’re not hers to take. And she’s heard a lot of stories. Both good and bad.

Back in high school Wiseman was growing up in Andover, KS. Her graduating class of 125 was nothing but sameness. The students looked alike and talked alike. They were from suburban and farming communities, conservative and happy. Wiseman’s career in counseling started during those years, before she knew it’d be her life. It was her nature to care, to help. She began to notice that even in her happy town, there were still issues affecting her peers.

“That’s kind of where this whole thing started because I had some friends in high school with some severe family issues and I was their therapist at the time,” Wiseman said. “I didn’t know that. I was just a good listener.”

A few years later, Wiseman officially began her career in therapy. She was 21 and studying human development and social work at the University of Kansas. The brown-haired girl from the sheltered small town decided to work in a home for troubled youth called “The Shelter.” Wiseman had only known a world of respect. Respect for teachers and friends. No one cursed or yelled, everyone followed the rules.

When Wiseman first started at “The Shelter” she quickly learned how different her growing up was from these teens. Fourteen kids, co-ed. Boys on the top floor. Girls on the bottom. And here, rules seemed like they were meant to be broken. Some had been arrested, some had been removed from unsafe home environments.

“Walking in that first day,” Wiseman said. “It was sink or swim.”

There, Wiseman had the best and worst experiences of her career. It was there she realized that she loved working with teens. She developed a heart for it. She marvelled at how much they had been through, the walk-out fathers, the violence, the drugs. It was foreign to her, but their stories didn’t just show their weaknesses, they showed their strength.

At “The Shelter,” she developed a thick skin against insults and curse words and learned that building a relationship with young people was easier than fighting them.

“A lot of times I look at their insults, their rudeness, their comments, that it wasn’t about me,” Wiseman said. “It was about what was going on in their world. They were unhappy with their life.”

She then went to work as a court mandated counselor and then transitioned to guidance counseling after having two children of her own.

For Wiseman, East is a stark contrast to her previous jobs. Students are dealing with a totally different set of issues. Instead of gang violence and drug problems, Wiseman now helps students who have experienced depression, anxiety or family issues.

“[I see] a lot of kids going ‘I should be the happiest kid on the planet. I’ve got two parents. I’ve got a car. I’ve got food, clothes, but I’m not happy. What’s wrong with me?” Wiseman said.

According to Wiseman, the kids in “The Shelter” were forthright with their issues. They rarely hid their problems, and would discuss them openly. Among East students she perceives a different attitude.

“Kids feel they need to be high functioning at all times.” Wiseman said. “They feel a sense of ‘I need to look good, I need to sound good, I need to be good and that’s all there is to it.’ And I think that’s a lot of pressure.”

Wiseman thinks that secrecy hurts students. Sometimes it’s hard for them to overcome, but oftentimes students just need to speak with another human.

And being that other human isn’t easy. But that’s why she’s here.

Wiseman will have days when she can’t fix someone’s problem. There will be times when she has no idea what to do. She’ll still feel that she’s doing it all wrong, that she should quit. But quitting isn’t her style. Instead of giving up, she checks in with herself, she goes to the gym. She plays with her kids, takes them to soccer practice.

“I try to keep myself very healthy,” Wiseman said. “I can’t come in being a mess.”

Because Wiseman is here, every day, in that corner office, smiling and ready to help the students who stream in and out by the half hour.

“If they’re going to come in and say ‘I need help,” Wiseman said. “I want to give it to them in any way that I can.”