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March 7 was Employee Appreciation Day, but we’re celebrating our team members all month long by sharing their stories. Read more about Antonia Young, a Counselor at our Rivermont Greater Petersburg campus. 

What is your favorite thing about working here?  

My favorite thing is my ability to be as creative as I want. I can come up with any type of activity for the students or any type of group session that I want to do with them. I run the school store. I manage incentives around the school. I plan field trips so I can be creative as possible, and I can make anything that we do unique and tailored to the student's needs. 

What keeps you coming to work each day?  

The growth and progress of the students every day. Being able to see them change throughout the times that I get to spend with them. Now we're on rolling enrollment. So, one day we get a student and then you know a couple months later they may transition and so we get to see them change in a short amount of time or a long amount of time, but either way to see them progress forward.  

How do you make an impact on students’ lives?  

I'm a school therapist, so making an impact can just be with their social and emotional well-being. I get to have intimate conversations with our students, and I get the opportunity to create a safe space for them, for them to open up to me, and be themselves. But the beautiful thing about our school in Petersburg, it is a very family-oriented atmosphere. 
So the students get that relationship with all our staff. I feel that's the best way I could make an impact on their lives is just being able to have those conversations that they may not be able to have at home or outside of school. 

Which one of our BetterTogether values resonates with you most personally and why? (Integrity, Accountable, Collaborative, Inclusive, Supportive)  

I would say inclusive because our school is an inclusive environment. We have students who are extremely high functioning, and we have students who are a bit lower functioning. 
So you can go to any part of the school and deal with a unique group of students. Our staff works very, very hard to make everybody feel comfortable. 

What does a “day in the life” look like for your role?  

Everyday looks different! We actually come in at 8:00 AM. I try to go around, talk to all the staff, meet with everybody, see how everyone's doing, and say good morning. Maybe we're debriefing about a restraint from the day before or having a meeting about student behavior. Then the students come in at 8:30, so I head outside. With the help of the principal and two other MHA, we get all the students off the bus, greet them by name, give high fives, and play some music to get them hyped for breakfast. 

After that, I walk around all the classrooms to make sure, with the help of other staff, that everyone is in ratio—that we have enough staff for the number of students in each class. I do an emotional check-in with all the students to make sure everybody's at their base. 

Once I've checked in with everyone, I usually get back to my office to get ready for group therapy. Then I go into a classroom and do a session with either the middle school, high school, or one of the two elementary classes I help with. 

After group therapy, it's incentive time. I take out the snack cart, load it up with different snacks, and if a student has earned a Level 3 for good behavior that day, I call them up on the microphone so they can come out into the hallway, and we celebrate them with a snack. 

Then I either do individual sessions or go on rounds again. I walk around all the classrooms—by then, there’s probably been a behavior or two—so I try to help as much as possible, whether it’s addressing behavior or sitting in classrooms to help with academics. At that point, I might pull a student into the office for a one-on-one catch-up. 

I might also be in a long meeting, joining an IEP meeting, or meeting with the principal or vice principal. Then I'm checking classrooms again, sending classes out for the day, and we have dismissal at 3:00. After that, we hold team meetings—by then it’s around 4:00, and I head back to the office to get ready for the next day. 

Can you talk a little bit about your career trajectory and what led you to where you are now?  

I graduated from North Norfolk State University. I got my bachelor's and master's degree in social work. I ended up getting into a program that supported foster care and CPS. So, I worked at CPS for a year. While I was there, I wanted to expand more of the clinical aspect of therapy. So, I wanted to start getting my clinical license, so I had to get a job that was clinical based for me to be able to get hours towards my licensure. That’s where I landed a job opportunity at Rivermont Schools, to work towards getting my hours. This opportunity allowed me to be creative and flexible. I got several aspects of social work as well, establishing connections with students, their family, being in the classroom and face-to-face therapy. 

What has been your proudest moment or accomplishment in your role?  

My proudest accomplishment with Rivermont is probably seeing my students transition back to public school. I support the RPBI as our emotional disability program. So those are our students with anxiety, PTSD, depression, and any disability. Our entire goal is to build up their social skills and establish self-confidence to be able to go back to public school. So, the best part of it is when they come into my office and say “Miss Young, I feel like I'm ready. I feel like I've got everything that I could do here and I'm ready to go back.” 

My favorite part is being able to advocate for them and sit in those meetings and tell everybody how of a great individual they have become. Just being able to see the smile on their face and being able to see the smile on their parents' faces because of our program is the most beautiful.  

What is something about you that not many people know? 

I think I'm a great singer. I'm not a good singer at all, but I put on the best concerts in the world. I have a dog named Bishop. I'm very family oriented. I have three sisters, and two nephews.