Notre Dame counselor Ruth Ann Hester has been named the 2024 SEMOSCA Secondary School Counselor of the Year!
Hester has been a school counselor at Notre Dame Regional High School for nine years. Her work focuses on her students’ development emotionally, academically, socially and toward their future.
“Ruth Ann has always been a tremendous advocate for our students,” said Notre Dame Principal Tim Garner. “On numerous occasions, I have received comments from the students’ families about how caring Ruth Ann has been and how she was able to be empathetic towards their student’s situation.”
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, 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 is always searching for new things to aid the counseling curriculum. She is constantly seeking 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.
Outside of her counseling duties, Hester is involved in many facets of the Notre Dame school community. She is co-moderator of Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD Club), the liaison to the EPIC Schools program, and is actively involved in the planning and execution of Red Ribbon Week events. Hester spearheaded the process that allowed Notre Dame’s Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Team to transition into a coalition. She coordinates speakers and community engagement for substance prevention with our students and faculty, and helps lead Notre Dame’s Project Prom and Lock-In events.
She has made service to Notre Dame a part of her everyday mission. She created, and is the sole moderator for, Notre Dame’s Seasons of Giving service club and Friends of Mercy prayer club. She adopted a grotto revitalization project at the school with Seasons of Giving, she volunteers for numerous events benefitting our Performing and Visual Arts programs, she spearheads the clean-up crew for the Winter Extravaganza, and assists with every school dance.
Hester is also very involved in her local parish, Immaculate Conception in Jackson, where she is the President of the St. Ann’s Ladies Sodality, cantors, and is a member of the Heartland Pops Chorus.
Assistant Principal Paul Unterreiner says, “Ruth Ann is simply the most genuine and hard-working person I know. She pours her heart and soul into everything she does. She takes on leadership roles in a multitude of areas at Notre Dame including the Friends of Mercy prayer club, SADD, and ASAP, our substance abuse prevention team. She is the first one to volunteer for any event that involves service to the community or that involves our students. She truly sees every child as a gift from God and treats them accordingly. I can’t imagine another school counselor that is more deserving for this award. Ruth Ann Hester is the definition of what a school counselor should be.”
Hester takes on every role in her life with gusto. She is a dedicated wife, mom, grandma, sister and daughter, and will drop anything to show up for her family. In the community, she is an LPC and has worked in some capacity at Community Counseling Center for 32 years, continuing to see clients around her school schedule.
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.”
Congratulations to Ruth Ann Hester on his most deserved recognition for many years of work serving others.
By: Amanda Mueth, Alexana Gremaud, Jordan Eastridge