Wendy Anderson's official title at Monmouth-Roseville Junior High School is counselor. In the district's own records, though, she's actually listed as something else: advisor. It's a distinction she prefers, and not a small one to her.

"I am here to advise with school needs, personal needs as well," she said.

Counselor, in her mind, carries a heavier connotation, something closer to in-depth psychological work, and sometimes a student does need more intensive mental health support than a school can appropriately provide. When that happens, Anderson can help connect families with outside resources, but  much of her daily work happens in the territory between childhood and independence, and junior high students occupy a lot of that territory.

"It's such a transitional time for kids, seventh and eighth grade," Anderson said. "It's hard."

Seventh-graders arrive from elementary school accustomed to one environment and suddenly discover considerably more freedom, exactly what they wanted, except independence brings responsibility along with it. Students have to move from class to class, keep track of assignments and belongings, navigate the expectations of different teachers, and increasingly manage things adults once managed for them. Eighth-graders, meanwhile, are already beginning to look toward high school, considering classes and thinking about what comes next. Through all of it, nearly everything social seems to become most important.

"At this age, they tend to lean more on their peers than they do adults," Anderson said.

That can make her job interesting. The very students who sometimes need an adult perspective the most are reaching a developmental stage when they would rather work things out with friends. Anderson doesn't necessarily think that is bad; trying to solve problems independently is part of growing up.

"That is what we're trying to teach them, to become more independent and be able to navigate, be resilient, and build that grit," she said.

Life will keep changing, and the problems a middle schooler encounters won't look like the problems that same person faces years later, but  some of the tools transfer.

"You still gotta have that grit," Anderson said. "You still gotta be resilient. You still gotta be able to handle the hard."

Anderson has spent a long time helping Monmouth-Roseville students build those tools. She joined the junior high staff in 2007 as a computer teacher while pursuing her master's degree in counseling, and the timing of her eventual transition was almost uncanny. She completed her master's in May 2010, the same month longtime counselor Marcia Parrish retired, so Anderson was able to move directly into that position.

"It's amazing how some things just fall into place," she said.

Her path had been gradually pointing toward counseling for years. After graduating from Monmouth College in 2000, Anderson taught second grade in Mount Pulaski, where a counselor there first planted the idea that counseling might suit her. Later, she taught middle school math, recruited students for Monmouth College, and kept finding herself drawn toward work that involved helping people find their way... advising, in other words.

Now, after nearly two decades at Monmouth-Roseville Junior High, Anderson possesses something no graduate program can teach… history. She has known siblings, understands families, lives in the district, and knows the community. With about 199 students in the building this year, she takes pride in knowing their names and something about each of them.

"I think that goes a long way," she said.

Sometimes her work begins with paperwork. When we sat down to talk, Anderson carried a folder filled with 504 plans she was reviewing, since accommodations that made sense in elementary school often need to change at the junior high level. Different building, different expectations, different child in some ways, so she looks again. What does this student need now? That question runs through much of Anderson's work.

Her long tenure has also given her a front-row seat to Monmouth-Roseville itself. Anderson grew up between Monmouth and Roseville but attended Yorkwood, which is now part of United. As a student in that tiny district, Monmouth seemed enormous!

"Intimidating," she remembers.

She never would have imagined Monmouth and Roseville becoming one district, either. Today, she is part of it.

"It works," Anderson said. "It has worked for several years now and continues to work."

She particularly values the junior high staff, many of whom have worked together for years and developed what she calls a family feel, a familiarity that matters when the business at hand is young people trying to figure themselves out. Anderson cannot make every decision for them, and she shouldn't. The objective is not to eliminate every difficult experience before it happens, but to give students enough guidance and support that they can increasingly navigate those experiences themselves.

Sometimes that means helping a seventh-grader manage newfound independence. Sometimes it means helping an eighth-grader think about high school. Sometimes it means knowing that a student needs something deeper and helping put the right resource within reach. And sometimes it simply means knowing a kid's name and a little bit of the story behind it.

Counselor works as a title. But after listening to Wendy Anderson describe the job, advisor seems awfully close to perfect. She isn't there to walk the road for them. She is helping them learn how to walk it for themselves..