After last year’s Director of Guidance, Mrs. Sayed parted ways with Morgan, the Morgan school needed to find someone to take in the position, after long and hard searching, Mrs. Hagness and Mr. Luther found Mr. Grasso. Mr Grasso has been a guidance counselor for 4 years now but has been in the education system for 15 years. This is his first year at the Morgan High School. Before this year he taught at Amistad Academy in New Haven, St. Michael School in Fall River, Massachusetts, and most recently at Xavier High School in Middletown. He has lived in New England his entire life, but he grew up in East Haven, Connecticut. He attended Boston College as his first college but ended up getting two different graduate degrees from Providence College and North American University.
“I decided early on in college that I wanted to work with kids and be a teacher, and then I found that I was working in a different role in a school and I wanted to be with kids again, and I had that opportunity when my old school counselor retired, and I took her position,” said Mr. Grasso. As a student, he was very hardworking, but things never came easy to him as he says he wasn’t naturally smart, but he cared a lot about his grades and his peers so he worked as hard as he possibly could on all his assignments.
Mr. Grasso’s biggest influence as to why he became a guidance counselor is and will always be his guidance counselor, Mrs. Thomas. He said that he went to her a lot during his senior year of high school because he was struggling a lot with planning out his college application process and dealing with all the stress of AP classes, but she would always calm him down and keep him focused on all his work. He became a guidance counselor to help kids learn the ins and outs of high school and help them become successful in life past high school.
Being the Director of Guidance is different from being a counselor. Mr. Grasso overseas all the different programs to help high school students for their future. They also engage a lot more with the community than regular counselors do.
Mrs. O’Beirn said, “What’s needed in a good director is somebody with empathy and good leadership skills who’s not afraid to sometimes do the harder things but also lead by example, and I feel that Mr. Grasso embodies all those qualities. He has empathy, he is a great leader, and he’s kind and helpful.”
Being a guidance counselor is a lot harder than it looks, “People think it’s like helping kids solve their problems, we work with families a lot too and getting to know their parents, providing a lot of different programs for parents that they can help their kids with, we connect students with a lot of different resources outside and inside of school to help them become successful. It’s a busy day, a lot of time spent with kids, but also a lot of time spent on different aspects of our programming, getting ready for PSAT’s, AP exams,” said Mr. Grasso.
Mr. Grasso loves his job, he says, “Every day is different, but my favorite part of the day is when I get to meet with students and help them get closer to achieving their dreams or solving a problem, and that happens on a daily basis. I make sure that we are working on various projects to support students and get information to parents every day.” After teaching at his past schools, Mr. Grasso learned that every kid is a little different, and they all need something different to get them to the next phase of their goal.
