Redwood Reimagined: Revised Counseling Model Grades Up Student Support

With the 23-24 school year starting underway, Redwood High School is embracing a revised counseling strategy that focuses on grade and last name assignments. This will enhance the interaction process and dynamic between students and their counselors.

By: Donya Hassanshahi

As the 2023-2024 academic year begins, Redwood counselors are approaching this year with students differently.

Throughout the past few school years, counselors and students have been assigned via an alphabetical basis. Now, counselors are assigned students based on grade and last name, which allows for a more organized meeting process.

The list below shows the current counselors for each grade level and their respective contact information:

COUNSELORS: Assigned by Grade Level then Last Names
9th Grade Counselor	Roberto Mariscal	730-7391   rmariscal@vusd.org
10th Grade Counselor:  A-L	Jazmine Martin	730-7709   jrodriguezesparza@vusd.org
10th Grade Counselor:  M-Z	Calvin Cole	735-8171   ccole@vusd.org
11th Grade Counselor: A-K	Aubrey Buchanan	730-7708   abuchanan@vusd.org
11th Grade Counselor: L-Z	Maria Cabrera	730-7703   mcabrera01@vusd.org
12th Grade Counselor: A-K	Luis Matta	730-7712   lmatta@vusd.org
12th Grade Counselor: L-Z	Sonia Torres	730-7770   storres01@vusd.org

Assistant Principle Mrs. Alexa Barba-Tepper oversees students services, which includes counseling. She says, “Not known to you current students, but we had a grade level model for many years, and then we switched right before [2025] group came into Redwood. We really only had what we call the ‘alpha model’ for five years, so we actually had the grade-level model longer.”

With the success of the alpha model for the past few years, why revert back to the grade level model?

“We missed it. It worked really well for students and parents and teachers, so we’ve just been doing a lot of research and surveying about moving back and we finally pulled the trigger this year,” says Barba.

The Ranger community seeks to benefit the students with every decision initiated.

Barba says this decision will be a positive change for students “…because you just have more streamlined counselors.”

Despite there being two counselors per grade level, she says “…it’s just now you only have two people to go to versus getting lost with seven.”

With this focus, teachers are able to have “…stronger relationships with those counselors because, if you are a Biology teacher, you mainly have sophomores, so now you’re only working with two counselors versus seven,” says Barba when considering the well-rounded benefits.

Although the positives outweigh the negative outlooks, she says, “The one hiccup would be if a parent now, if they have two or three students at Redwood now, there might be two or three different counselors the parents work with.” As of now, this issue has been worked with and is minimally an issue.

Given the freshmen class this year is approximately 800 students alone and the class of 2024 parting ways into adulthood, Barba says, “You’re going to see especially the freshmen sophomores have more attention ’cause seniors take up like seventy-five percent of time and energy…That’s honestly really the main motivation is to move the seniors out the way, because they need a lot of attention, which is totally valid.” This allows freshmen and sophomores to have more attention as they grasp the ropes of their high school lives.

Mr. Luis Matta is a senior counselor for last names A-K. His office is located inside the main office.

Attending to the senior class is one of the critical points as the school year begins. During the previous school year, Matta recalls not having a many seniors students, though now he is able to direct all of his attention to these Rangers.

“Coming back, they’re excited—they’re seniors, but also their post-high school plans. Believe it or not, whether they’re starting to apply for colleges, scholarships, whatever, this is the time. So, just focusing in that group allows me extra time to really streamline that focus and customize my time,” says Matta.

As opposed to his previous experiences, he says he is now able to attune to seniors needs “…versus putting different hats on, like I’m speaking to a 9th grader, 10th grader, 11th grader, because they all have different needs and different things. Now, it’s all senior focus, graduation, so I like it. I do.”

Academically speaking, Matta says the counselors are benefitting students by being focused on a specific grade level. Rather than diverting their attention to other points in a students’ academic career, counselors are not only focusing on a group of students, but work with, in his case, senior parents and senior teachers only.

“Now we are like, ‘Hey, I only have a group of teachers that we’re working with and a little closer with those specific teachers, those specific students.’ Now I have a little lighter case load, number wise not dramatic, but it is heavier overall because it is a senior year versus me dealing with 400 sophomores, 400 freshmen—its a different conversation,” he says.

From a social aspect, Matta says it is “…great because now we known who the senior counselors are and whether it’s just me or the other senior counselor, Mrs. Torres, seniors can come to either one of us versus like ‘who’s my counselors again’ based on alpha, based on credits, different things.”

Mrs. Maria Cabrera is a junior counselor for last names L-Z. Her office is located inside the Annie R. Mitchell school library.

With this being her third year at Redwood, Cabrera says “I like to consider I’m still fairly new, especially in this position that I am now because I was an intervention counselor, one of the two intervention counselors, the two years that I was here.”

Given the revisions made to the counselor assignments, she says, “I feel more with servicing just junior level students because I can only focus on one grade level versus before. We were kind of getting pulled and tugged in different directions with different grade levels, and I feel like we get to know our students a little more.”

She says she is in favor of the idea, and looks forward to the year for Rangers, “It’s just more concentration on one level so we can work a little more with our kiddos.”

“In a personal aspect, I’d say—well one: [students] get to know us a little bit more. Two: we get to interact with them and their parents, and there isn’t a need to go back and forth with several different counselors,” says Cabrera about the positive impact it will have on students and their families.

From an academic sense, she says “…it would just, hopefully, strengthen their outlook on their post-high school plans and then how they do well here.”

This change implemented within the Ranger community create an orientated, streamlined, and personalized experience for students, Redwood families, and educators.

Tags: clubs & lifestyles, counselors, Donya Hassanshahi, rangers, Redwood, redwood counselors, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, redwood rangers, rhs, students