Ruth Carrigan, a resident of East Bridgewater and Whitman-Hanson guidance counselor, has received the Massachusetts School Counselors Association Leadership award.

Whitman-Hanson Guidance Director Ruth Carrigan has received the Massachusetts School Counselors Association Leadership award.

“My name was submitted to the South Shore Guidance Association for the guidance administrator of the year award and I won that,” said Carrigan. “From there my name was then submitted on the State Councilors Conference.”

Carrigan has been the guidance director at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School for four years.

Before Carrigan came to Whitman-Hanson she worked for 15 years in college admissions at Baystate College in Boston. There she was the Director of Admissions and Director of Continuing Education.

“I wanted to be able to help more kids,” said Carrigan. “And when you work in admissions you are promoting the college you work for.  I wanted to be able to work with the students and help them find the path that was right for them in terms of admissions and college planning and so forth.”

Carrigan decided to transfer her skills from college admissions to secondary education and joined the guidance department at Silver Lake in 1998.

“I think it’s an important job and I try to share my expertise with the students here at Whitman-Hanson,” she said.

At Silver Lake Carrigan worked with John McEwan who was a principal there, and is now the superintendent at Whitman-Hanson.

“I found him to be a great mentor and a great leader to work for,” said Carrigan.

Most of her efforts have been on the local and state level. She has been involved with the South Shore Guidance Association, and has been vice president for two years and president for two years and has stayed on as treasurer. SSGA is an organization that helps with counselors’ professional development.

“On the state level I have been involved in Massachusetts School Counselors Association for 20 years,” she said. She served as the vice president post secondary when she was on the college level. Carrigan also was in charge of a hospitality committee for MASCA for several years and the conference planning committee too.

“I think we went from a model where guidance counselors kind of remained in the office and kids would drop by if they had problems, somewhat of the mental health approach to counseling, to a pro-active department,” said Carrigan. “We’re concerned for every kid. If you spend all your time just working on the 10 percent that will take most of your time you don’t have time to see everyone else. So what we institute is a comprehensive developmental guidance program, where the counseling staff is out working in the classrooms.”

“We have a junior program where we start planning for college,” she said. “There is also a college essay project where we help every senior write their college essay and we partner with  different colleges, and we actually send those essays out to the college admission people, and then they come back and visit with the kids and critique their essays.”

“We really try to reach out to parents and the kids to make sure everybody has access and everybody is getting the same information,” explained Carrigan.

The counselors offer programs at each grade level.

“As a department we have sat down and we looked at what do kids need to know? What do parents need to know? And we tried to put together a comprehensive program,” said Carrigan. “We’re constantly reviewing it, we review the workshops we do and get feedback.”

Outside of guidance work, Carrigan has also been a Cub Scout den leader. She runs a program called Pioneer Clips at the church she belongs to, and also a Bible school.

Carrigan and her family have hosted more than 20 exchange students in 10 years; she works a lot with Cultural Homestay International.

Carrigan spends most of her time doing things for kids.

She is part of the advisory board for Sloan Career Cornerstone. The goal of Sloan Career Cornerstone is to make information about careers in science technology, math, and medicine available for kids.

Before East Bridgewater hired their guidance counselor, Carrigan worked with the guidance department to keep them up to speed on what they needed to do to implement a guidance program. East Bridgewater never had a guidance director, so there were things Whitman-Hanson was doing that the new principal at East Bridgewater asked for help with, explained Carrigan. They hired a new guidance director, but before she was there I went over and tried to help contribute to the curriculum and guidance lessons so they were getting the word out about making a plan, she explained.

“MASCA has a curriculum they encourage counselors to follow called the Mass. Model for School Counseling,” said Carrigan.

“It’s very nice to be recognized by your peers,” said Carrigan. “Counselors and directors in general are hardworking people.”