Last Thursday, Anne Marie Strobel brought her baby to work. It wasn’t the original plan. Her baby sitter that day had come down with a stomach bug, and so, in a pinch, the new mother packed her 8-week-old son into the car and within the hour the pair were installed behind the desk in Strobel’s new office at Iola High School, where the 31-year-old will begin her work as the freshman and sophomore guidance counselor in just over a week.
“Everyone here has been so kind,” said Strobel of her colleagues at USD 257. “I told them, ‘I’m very sorry — the sitter was sick.’ And they said, ‘Oh, it’s fine if you bring your baby. School hasn’t started yet.’ This place is just such a happy environment. It’s been so nice to feel really at home and comfortable right away.”
An Emporia native, Strobel received her undergraduate education at Ozark Christian College, in Joplin, and her graduate training at Emporia State. Today, she lives with her husband and smiling, blonde-tufted infant son, Guy, on a farm near Garnett.
The new counselor seems in every way suited to her job. She’s thoughtful in conversation, laughs easily, and broadcasts a natural compassion. And she’s a lover of the rousing quote.
There are inspirational placards on a bulletin board in her office, a quotation from the ageless Dr. Seuss stenciled on the wall, and a maxim inked in permanent cursive just above Strobel’s left shoulder blade (“Out of adversity comes opportunity”) — phrases whose meanings are intended to detonate in the impressionable minds of the teens who encounter them at just the right time.
Mostly, students will visit Strobel with scheduling questions or for advice on coursework. But they’ll find their way to her office, too, when they’re in some anguish — when they are lonely or bullied or overwhelmed by schoolwork, or when the stress at home spills into their lives as students.
“I realize I can’t fix all of their problems,” said Strobel. “But I can be there for them, and that means so much.”
It’s not an abstract promise in Strobel’s case. For a period of years in her youth, Strobel lived in California with her parents. But, at 13, she and her mother returned to Kansas, where Strobel was thrust into a classroom of unfamiliar faces at a new junior high.
“Middle school is hard for most people. And I moved from California to Kansas in the eighth grade. It was really overwhelming and traumatic, because you’re 13 and everything is already awkward, and then you move and it’s a different culture.
“But I had the best middle school counselor. He was so kind and so helpful in getting me to feel comfortable in my own skin. He just retired this year. Mr. Ellis. … He didn’t have to do a whole lot with me probably, but the fact that he was there was so helpful. You don’t need too much in middle school; you just need someone to love on you.
“Ever since then I’ve wanted to do something in this field.”
Strobel’s previous job was as a counselor for elementary school children in the West Franklin school district, near Ottawa. But her intentions, always, were to work with teens.
“Even in college, I wanted to be around teenagers and help them and talk to them.” A lot of people are disconcerted by teenagers, said Strobel, “because they’re ornery. But I love them because they think critically about things. You know, that’s why they’re ornery — they’re questioning everything. But it’s because they think critically that you’re able to give them things that challenge their minds and help them become who they are ultimately going to be.”
While Strobel’s job as counselor won’t start in earnest until the 26th, she’s been busy during the enrollment period acquainting herself with her new digs and learning the baroque mechanics of PowerSchool, IHS’s comprehensive scheduling software.
“Do you know the movie ‘Apollo 13’? When they give the crew like seven items” — duct tape, plastic hose, baggies, etc. — “and say ‘Here, you have to make an oxygen-producing machine out of this.’ And the guys are like, ‘Oka-ay?’ That’s kind of how it feels for me. I’m in the process of putting all this new information together.”
When she’s not on the clock, Strobel is an active participant in the civic life of Garnett. She is on the Community Foundation board, and teaches a number of fitness classes — spinning, water aerobics, yoga — in Anderson County. “Other than that,” said the busy working mother, “I’m kind of a homebody.”
It’s a rare good thing to have a job that you love, to be doing in life the thing you always meant to do. “I’m really excited to be here,” said Strobel. “I’m not nervous. I’ve been nervous about jobs in the past. It’s just kind of one of those things where I’ve known I’ve needed to do this my whole life. So now, it’s just excitement.”
Compassionate nature led to counseling job
