Meet the 2024 NC School Counselor of the Year

Annie Goldberg quickly deflects the honor of being named 2024 North Carolina School Counselor of the Year to her fellow professionals.

“North Carolina has some of the strongest school counselors, some of the most dedicated school counselors,” she said. “I was just the one that was lucky enough to be recognized.”

But when Goldberg ’16, ’17 (MEd), a school counselor in the Alamance-Burlington School System, talks about her work, she reveals the strength of her advocacy for her students and her profession.

She first became interested in counseling as a Carolina undergraduate studying psychology. While Goldberg was working on research project, the faculty member leading the project connected her with a Durham school counselor.

“After shadowing that school counselor, I remember thinking, ‘This is it,’” Goldberg said. “I really liked being able to remove barriers, and I loved seeing her build relationships. That blended everything that I was interested in and what I was looking for in a career.”

Goldberg took the knowledge and experience from the UNC School of Education’s school counseling program to Broadview Middle, a Title 1 school in Burlington, North Carolina. To receive federal Title 1 funding, at least 40% of the school’s student population must be from low-income households.

“The UNC school counseling program really focused on being strength-based when working with students and families,” Goldberg said. “That really shaped how I view my work here and how I work with students and families.”

Using data and creativity

To support students academically, socially and emotionally, Goldberg relies on school-level data to see where her students need help. In the last year, she said that data helped to shed light on the needs of Broadview’s “newcomer students” — students who have lived in the U.S. for less than two years and are often less fluent in English.

She partnered with the school’s English as a second language department, hosting newcomer socials that included presentations and activities. With those interventions, Goldberg said they were able to reduce the number of students with 10 or more absences by 30%.

“We built community with those students,” she said, “but we also gave them information about attendance policy, the importance of coming to school and also resources here in Burlington.”

After conversations with English language arts teachers, Goldberg launched another initiative, this time to help students on the cusp of reading proficiency.

Goldberg gathered a group of 15 students for a project to make their own books, which they would read to Broadview’s two feeder elementary schools. She led sessions focused on vocabulary, how to start and end a book and how to illustrate it. Two students paired up on a book about how to take care of a pet. Another wrote one about how to handle a friendship issue.

“The elementary kids looked at them like celebrities,” Goldberg said. The middle school students in the project helped improve their grade’s English scores on end-of-grade tests, which helped the school meet its 2023-24 growth goals.

Goldberg has also taken on leadership roles among school counselors and educators. She served as Region 4 director for the N.C. Association of Educators’ Student Services Division and as co-vice president of government relations for the N.C. School Counselor Association.

Goldberg is a U.S. Department of Education School Ambassador Fellow and one of only 57 school counselors to earn the American School Counselor Association’s Certified School Counselor designation this year.

“Taking on these leadership roles has really allowed me to get to know counselors in other regions of the state. It really helps our advocacy efforts and ability to learn from each other,” she said.

Read more about Annie Goldberg.