Texas Tech K-12 Says Hello to New Advising Leader

By Leslie Cranford, section manager

With the retirement of Brenda Shupe as Texas Tech K-12’s lead counselor and senior adviser, the school welcomes a new face to the role, but someone not new to education. Charlotte Ward started training with Brenda in July.

Charlotte is a native of Big Spring, Texas. She earned a Bachelor of Multidisciplinary Studies from Texas Tech University’s College of Education and a Master of Education and Counseling from Sul Ross State University. Hired right out of college by Lubbock Independent School District, she taught elementary science for five years. (Fun fact: Charlotte replaced Rhonda Coursey, Texas Tech K-12’s assistant principal, when Rhonda left her elementary school in Lubbock ISD to work in K-12).

After earning her master’s in counseling, Charlotte became a middle school counselor at Dunbar in Lubbock in 2007 for six years and moved up to a similar position at Lubbock High School in 2013.

Her two motivations to become a teacher came early in her life.

“I saw how my parents struggled because neither of them had an education beyond high school,” Charlotte explained. “I was first-generation going to college. I just wanted to try to make a better life for myself.”

From elementary through high school, Charlotte also says she had pivotal mentors/teachers who changed a lot of things for her, opened her mind and motivated her to grow and want more for herself.

Coming back to Texas Tech was literally an answer to a wish. In the early 2000s, even before Charlotte graduated, she knew she wanted to come back to the university to work … somehow. She didn’t know what that would look like, but it was just a tiny wish that stayed on the back burner for a long time.

“I actually kind of forgot about it for a little bit – probably the last 10 years, just not thinking there was anything I could transition into,” Charlotte reflected. “Then Brenda’s retirement happened, and the position was exactly what I was hoping for! I’m so excited to come back to Texas Tech to work and be a Red Raider.”

Even though her role is similar to what she had been doing, Charlotte is anxious to dive in.

Among the usual adviser/counselor tasks of enrolling students, getting them registered for classes, advising them on graduation plans, she says the “really neat” opportunity about this setting is she gets to work with elementary through high school, which she hasn’t done in some time.

“Along with what goes into all of that, I get to work with a great team of other advisers, leading them as kind of their mentor/supervisor, which is going to be a little more than what I was doing before, but I’m excited about that as well,” she said. “And working with the administration here to just keep growing and improving what Texas Tech K-12 is doing and offering.”

Charlotte knows the ongoing challenge with online schooling is not being face to face, where she can pull a student in and build a personal rapport with them, where she can get a better sense of body language and all the non-verbal cues.

“It’s really hard to get any of that over the phone, but even if you do an online meeting or anything like that, a lot of times they’re with parents, too, and students sometimes aren’t always their full, open self in front of other people,” she said.

Trying to take what knowledge and skillset she has and help the program be the best version of itself, in whatever capacity that’s going to look like, is Charlotte’s hope for success as well as to be a valuable mentor to the team she’s joining.

Even in a new position at a new school, there is one thing Charlotte is absolutely certain of, and that’s the advice she gives her students as well as herself.

“I always find myself reminding myself and my students during difficult stages of life that this may be a hard time, but it’s also temporary. This, too, shall pass,” she notes. “They are so young; they don’t have that life experience to understand that tomorrow is another day. Next year is another year. They haven’t lived enough years to understand that longevity of time and experience. To understand and know, and just trust that they’ll get through it – it’s going to be hard. But that’s where you come in as the counselor or adviser – to just help them stay on the path.

“I’m excited about the challenge to learn and grow. It may sound cliché, especially of teachers, to say we’re lifelong learners, but we truly are. And I’m one of those five-year goal people – I’m always working on something.”