WHERE ARE THEY NOW? PHS grad Katie Martino finds niche in counseling
Our experiences, perspectives and skills evolve as we age, equipping us with the confidence, knowledge and networks necessary to pursue new paths.
A deeper understanding of ourselves and our values can guide us toward careers we veered from when younger as we learn they align in the present with our passions and goals, allowing for success and fulfillment.
That is what 2009 Parsons High School graduate Katie Martino discovered. With two parents who dedicated their lives to education and student advocacy, it may have seemed to some that Martino was destined to follow in their footsteps out of high school. But that was not the case.
Martino had taken part in completing career inventories assessing her likes, dislikes and passions to help her find a career path, but she still didn’t know what she wanted to do.
“I think I just had such a broad range of interests that I still didn’t know when I graduated high school what degree program I was going to be in,” Martino said. “I got my associate’s from LCC (Labette Community College) in communications, because I had to declare a major. The same thing happened when I got to college at Park University. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to work with people, so with public relations, I thought, ‘Oh, I will get to talk to a lot of people.’ As it turns out, I don’t prefer talking to adults. I prefer communicating with children.”
Martino graduated in December 2012 from Park University with a degree in public relations.
“I got a job in public relations in Lenexa next to Lawrence at a startup PR firm and I did not like it,” she said. Her venture into that career field lasted three months.
“My partner, Kellen (Smith), at the time was working as a para in an elementary school in Lawrence. I had subbed a little bit right after I graduated from college in Parsons, and I really enjoyed it. I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but I did,” she said. “When my partner was working as a para, he’d have all these fun stories when he’d come home from school and I was like, ‘OK, I’d like to do that.’
“So, I got a para position in 2013 at a Title I elementary school in Lawrence. I just fell in love with it and decided I wanted to be in education at that point, but I had already gotten my degree. So, I started looking for jobs I could do in education, or with children, that didn’t involve getting another degree,” she said.
In that time, she worked as a parent involvement facilitator at another elementary school in Lawrence. When she and her partner moved to Olathe, she took a position as a pediatric case manager with Johnson County Mental Health, but she found she really missed being in the school setting.
It became evident to her then she was going to have to go back to school. She initiated that step in 2018, deciding to pursue her master’s in school counseling.
A year into her master’s
See MARTINO, Page 10.
program she was hired at a psychiatric facility, the Clair Learning Center, and the Prairie Learning Center alternative day school, both provided through Olathe Public Schools.
She is now in her fifth year there and knows she has found her niche.
Martino thinks back to when she was in high school and conversations with her parents about whether she should pursue, like them, a career in education and said she recalls them sharing their thoughts that it was probably not the right choice for her.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t have the patience for that,’ and so I didn’t. It turns out, I actually love it. I totally love it. It was meant to be,” she said. But she noted it was the changes in herself over the years allowing her to find fulfillment and success in the career.
Each day she loves walking into a classroom many would want to avoid. The room is full of students who don’t want to be in school, who have tried all the other options unsuccessfully and landed in the most restrictive environment they can be in the district. As she initiates her discussions, the students are rude and cuss at her, but she continues, demonstrating that learned patience and that she cares about them.
“I’m going in there and talking to them about counseling, their future and careers and having them be excited and engaged by the end of that class is just extremely rewarding to me,” Martino said. “I love it.”
In March, she and Smith had a daughter, so Martino would love to move closer to home to be near her parents. Wherever they should move, she wants to stay in alternative education and remain a counselor.
Recalling her journey from high school to the present provides Martino with instructional material for her students. She had a conversation with her class in recent days about not knowing what direction they may want to go at this point.
“I don’t think you can choose the wrong thing, because like I told them, everything I have done up until this point led me to this point. I wouldn’t have gotten here without those other experiences. Fifteen years ago, I wasn’t ready to be a school counselor. I didn’t have the patience for it. All of these things up to this point led me here,” she said. “So I encouraged them not to be afraid to make mistakes or dip their toes in somewhere just to experience things.
“Also, there’s not one right path. You don’t just have to go to college. You can go straight into a career or take a gap year or go to technical school. There are so many options. They don’t have to feel stuck.”
To better help her students learn such lessons, she also pulls from her own experiences in taking her father’s college orientation class when she was in high school, during which she had the opportunity to hear from speakers from different colleges and schools.
“I think hearing from other people who weren’t my teachers at the time was valuable,” she said.
For her students today, she loves bringing in career speakers, technical college speakers, the whole gamut.
“Hearing from me gets monotonous,” she said. “When I have someone exciting from outside their daily lives, it sticks more. I think it is important for them to hear from other people.”
