’21 Honoree Rhonda Mercs

“I actually still have my calendar sheet from the day. Governor DeWine announced schools had two or three days before they had to just shut down. At that time, we were serving 14 local Catholic schools, and it was very scary. At first I thought it might be two weeks and that was OK, we could manage two weeks, and we could send packets home and that type of thing. But it all started to happen very quickly. Every school started providing remote learning differently. Some were using Google Classrooms, some were saying ‘No technology, we’re not sending Chromebooks home.’ I started getting calls from our counselors worried about how we could continue providing these services if we were not in person. How could we still stay connected to our families and our students and provide counseling? We work in a lot of schools that have very high poverty rates, so we were concerned about that. Some of them had young children at home. We had to really work through that: ‘What’s this going to look like? What can you do? What can’t you do? How can you help in another way? If you have to take two hours to help your child with school or whatever, what was that going to look like?’ We really worked at it and we just kept moving, kept asking, ‘What do you need? How can we be there to support you?’ ”

“To be honest, we’re needed more now than ever. When the governor relaxed some regulations due to the pandemic under emergency guidelines, we were able to do telehealth. Our counselors and family advocate were amazing. They started making YouTube videos, and we created a weekly newsletter, and used GoogleDrive so our family advocate, who is a social worker, could download resources. We just wanted to get as many resources out to our families as we possibly could. They needed to know where they could get free WiFi, and even where they could get food, information like that. We then started going out to the schools when we found out they would be providing food at certain times. Our families would be going to the schools to pick up food, and then they could reach out to counselors over the phone or by Zoom. A lot of our counselors had never used Zoom, so we had to run a lot of practice sessions.”

“Working from home, too, as a counselor was difficult for many of them because you have to keep boundaries into your personal life. It was another obstacle that we just had to navigate through, and pretty much accept that this was going to happen. We are prepared, but also, as a team, know that we have to be flexible. Our counselors now teach Second Step social and emotional learning curriculum in a hybrid environment, which they never thought they would be able to do. A student might connect with the music teacher, for example, and when they’re done, they can connect with the counselor to learn about empathy, emotion management, problem solving, anything like that. I think we’re more equipped with how to deal with that now, but you just don’t know what situations might come about with the families.”

“A lot of them did not qualify for the stimulus, but also weren’t able to work because some of the jobs they worked in, like hotels, were shut down. They are really struggling. “In 2007, I was placed in a school that was 100% poverty, and that was something new to my world. It changed my whole way of thinking about life. Now, when we are not with those children, I worry about them and their families. And it is so important that they receive our services. I know that life is hard, and I’m just passionate because I love children. The school I was at in 2007 had no extracurricular activities. Well, I was used to my kids having all of these things available to them, so I said, ‘I want to start a group and I want it to be seventh and eighth graders, and I want it to be about leadership.’ We’ve got to start promoting leadership with our youth, you know? I called the program ‘Peacemakers.’ ”

“It started with that one school, we now have Peacemakers in eight schools. It’s really just working with the students to show them other things in life. When we brought some kids here to UD from the first group of Peacemakers, they thought UD was one building. We gave them all Peacemaker shirts, and then took them on a tour to see a dorm room and the cafeteria. They were amazed at all the things that were going on here. Obviously this past year has been a little crazy. We do a retreat with the eighth-grade Peacemakers, but a week before last year’s retreat, we had to cancel. I have $1,200 of shirts in boxes that we were going to give to all of these students, but thank goodness we didn’t put a year on them!”

“But everything’s very different this year, you know? Counseling is difficult. We are conflicted about wearing masks because we are all about facial expressions. That’s been a real challenge for many of the counselors, or even having to stay apart. What about the little guys that just have to hug you when they walk into the school? We weren’t sure how to deal with that. But everyone has adapted and we’ve been able to manage. We started family engagement events to provide meals and then an activity for our families. We worked with the House of Bread, so they provided the food for a drive-by pickup for dinner. Then the families went home and jumped on a Zoom link, and we would do a game and it was so much fun. We worked with some SEHS student interns and they came up with a scavenger hunt for our families. The little kids would have their mom’s phone and you’d see them running, then see the ceiling, then see most everything in the house while they were ‘looking for something blue.’ We got to see all these pets, and the kids just loved that we were ‘in’ their houses. That’s been the positive part of what’s coming out of this pandemic. I have always felt like God is always with us here at ECHO, and we’re on whatever journey He takes us on. We go with Him.”