Notre Dame Regional High School counselor 2024 SEMOSCA Secondary School Counselor of the Year

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KBSI) – Notre Dame Regional High School counselor Ruth Ann Hester was named the 2024 SEMOSCA Secondary School Counselor of the Year.

Hester has been a school counselor at Notre Dame for nine years.

Her work focuses on her students’ development emotionally, academically, socially and toward their future.

Hester is a Peer Helper program co-coordinator, which supports freshman students as they transition into high school, and she ensures that each student is aware of resources available to them to make the most of their high school experience.

She helped start Candy with Counselors. It is a bi-monthly lunch event where students can learn about different things like World Suicide Prevention Week, National Eating Disorder Week, Mental Health Awareness Month and more from the counseling staff.

Hester seeks information that may help students at events like Show Me Careers, military academy presentations, and any webinar she can hop onto to learn anything new that could benefit the counseling program.

Her counseling colleagues say that no matter if you are student, family member or stranger, Hester will stop, greet you with a smile, and give you all the time in the world to make you feel seen.

If her fellow counselors had to describe Hester in two words, it would be “fierce advocate.”