Some stories are best told together—not because the people telling them are identical, but because the work they do becomes inseparable once you see the whole picture. That’s what happens with Teresa Carver and Alisha Lowry, the two counselors whose work forms an unseen but unmistakable backbone of Martinsville’s school community.

Teresa covers the elementary side. Alisha covers grades 7–12. Their students are different; their buildings are different. But the children they serve often come from the same families, the same challenges, the same unpredictable mix of love, instability, stress, and need that threads through many rural communities. The result? Two vantage points, one mission.

And as Alisha says very simply: “We take care of kids here. That’s what we do well.”

Teresa arrived at Martinsville after a full career. “Thirty-four years at Casey,” she says—teaching, supporting, witnessing the shifting tides of childhood across decades. She retired, subbed for a year, and then took on this new role when the district recognized the increased need for social-emotional learning after COVID.

“I came in to do the social emotional lessons,” she says. “There was a big need for that.”

Alisha’s story overlaps and extends. She has lived here her whole life. She is a Martinsville graduate—Class of 1999—and has spent nearly twenty years working in the district. “Year nineteen or twenty,” she estimates. She’s the 7–12 counselor, the athletic director, and a trusted figure for students who rely on the school as one of the few consistent elements in their lives.

Her perspective is deeply personal. She raised three children here. Her husband—also a Martinsville graduate—grew up knowing the same families and the same quiet network of community care. “My kids were all excellent out of high school,” she says proudly.

Teresa is also a Martinsville graduate—Class of 1983. Her roots run even deeper. Her grandparents owned Moonshine Store. Her children went to school here. Three of her grandchildren are at the grade school with her today. Her daughter works there too, as the preschool paraprofessional.

When Teresa says, “I was excited and thrilled to be able to give back to this community,” it doesn’t sound like a sentiment. It sounds like a circle closing.

The needs they see are not abstract. They have names, faces, and everyday consequences. Many Martinsville families are low-income, and that pressure trickles down into a child’s school day in ways that aren’t always visible but are always felt.

Alisha recalls a boy who came to her recently and said, “We’ve only got $100 left on our SNAP card and I’m hungry, Ms. Lowry.” She didn’t hesitate. She took him straight to Backpack Blessings—the food program organized and packed by Lora Parcel’s students at the high school.

“If they need something besides that,” she says, “we just go and get it.”

There’s no red tape in these moments. No debate. No judgment.

These counselors understand that kids absorb everything: the stress of parents running low on money, the worry about a job loss, the tension of deciding whether to buy food or pay a bill. Children don’t always verbalize these things, but they carry them quietly and heavily.

“And it shows up,” Teresa says. “It does.”

The work, therefore, stretches far beyond ordinary school counseling. Teresa and Alisha routinely connect families with outside resources—food, clothing, hygiene products, mental health services, trauma supports. They see acute needs and chronic ones. They address both.

But they never blame the families.

“Their families want them to do better. They do. And we want to uplift them—to help them achieve that.”

The longer they talk, the clearer it becomes that Martinsville’s strength is not theoretical. It is lived daily.

Superintendent Waggoner once asked Alisha what the district does well. Her answer has become almost a mantra: “We take care of kids.”

And that care is not limited to counselors or teachers. It runs through the entire system like a shared pulse:

• Bus drivers who know that being the first smile a child sees can matter more than safe driving.

• Lunch ladies who say, simply, “You can’t teach a hungry child.”

• Teachers who watch for emotional shifts and step in early.

• Paras who carry quiet burdens with compassion.

• A resale shop, Changing Hands, that donates shoes or clothing without hesitation when a need arises.

• A community that shows up for athletics, theater, fundraisers, games, and performances—even when they no longer have children in the district.

Martinsville has a saying: “Once a BlueStreak, always a BlueStreak.” Teresa extends it even further: “We’re all connected somewhere down the line.”

It’s not nostalgia. It’s culture.

Alisha, as athletic director, sees another powerful truth: many Martinsville kids are not raised by their biological parents. Some live with grandparents. Some bounce between homes. Some face trauma early and often.

Being part of a team—any team—gives them something steady.

“It’s a family,” Alisha says. For some students, it’s the family.

Sports give them structure, belonging, accountability, and encouragement. They give them the voice that might be missing elsewhere. And they give them adults who show up—really show up—day after day.

These kids need someone to cheer for them, Alisha says. Someone to say, “I see you. You matter.”

Sometimes that’s all it takes to redirect a life.

By the end of our conversation, the enormity of their work becomes almost poetic. Two women, both raised here, both shaped by this same community, now pouring themselves into the next generation with a kind of devotion that can’t be faked.

Alisha put it in the simplest terms: “We want school to be their safe place—where they feel loved and taken care of.”

Teresa echoed it: “It’s okay to have a bad day. You pick up and move on, and it’s not held against you.”

These aren’t just counselors. They are stabilizers. Encouragers. Bridge builders. Lifelines. They embody the idea I shared with them: that Martinsville’s adults are like an aspen grove—distinct trees above ground but joined at the roots below.

And in Martinsville, those roots run deep.