Three Counselors, One Connection

Years ago, when Mandy Savitz-Romer was working as a counseling intern at a middle school in Boston, she had no idea that an eighth-grader in the girls’ group she was running would also one day follow in her footsteps and become a middle school counselor — or that she’d eventually supervise one of Savitz-Romer’s recent grad students at the Ed School.
It’s the definition of a full circle moment.

And it’s one that Savitz-Romer, now a senior lecturer at the Ed School and faculty lead of the school counseling strand of the Human Development and Education Program, is happy to be a part of.

“Seeing Sugeily thrive as a professional is incredibly gratifying,” she says, referring to that former eighth-grader, Sugeily Santos, now a counselor at the Curley K–8 School in Boston and the 2025 Massachusetts School Counselor of the Year. 

“For the last two decades, I have been focused on professionalizing school counseling and so seeing such talented and committed people entering the field is encouraging,” Savitz-Romer says. “Perhaps more importantly, however, I am thrilled to watch a graduate of the Boston Public Schools return as a counselor. I’ve been at the Curley and seen Sugeily with students. She’s incredibly skilled and brings a lot of joy to the role.”

It's one of the reasons that Savitz-Romer recommended that Santos supervise Daniel Gutierrez, Ed.M.’24, C.A.S.’25, when it was time for him to do his yearlong counseling practicum. Savitz-Romer had Gutierrez in several of her classes and thought he’d be a good match.

“When he arrived at HGSE, he had some experience in college/career counseling and his first-year field placement deepened his expertise,” Savitz-Romer says. “But that is only one aspect of counselors’ work. Our graduates also need to be ready to enter the field prepared to support students’ personal development and well-being. When it came time to place Daniel in his second year, I knew he would have the experience to engage in relational and developmental work at the Curley School. And, under Sugeily’s supervision, I was certain he would receive the support he needed to stretch his abilities.”

Santos has been supervising Ed School students for several years and always felt confident in the recommendations that Savitz-Romer made. 

“I trust Mandy so much. She knows how to do the work,” Santos says. “I talk with her and I'm like, here are the type of people I need. She knows me. She not only knows me professionally, but she’s seen me grow.” 

It started back when Santos was in the small girls’ counseling group that Savitz-Romer was running that focused on career development, with an emphasis on gender-biassed career pathways. Savitz-Romer ways she remembers Santos being very social and bright, a serious student who worked hard. Santos, a first-gen student who was being challenged to take on harder work, remembers the group and Savitz-Romer’s guidance as an important anchor at that time in her life.

“I felt like I was doing well and they wanted to challenge me a little bit more. Maybe it was the pace of the school, but I know that I needed a lot of support with that change,” Santos says. “Change for teenagers is just hard, but I felt a sense of peace being with Mandy. And I remember saying, oh my gosh, she’s so smart. I got to pay attention to what she's saying.”

Santos says Savitz-Romer and others at the school also introduced her to new opportunities, including being recommended to a “life-changing” summer program at nearby Regis College.

“I was very blessed with counselors who were exposing me to things, taking me places, referring me to programs,” she says. “They convinced my mom to let me attend a sleepover camp, which was a very big deal in the Latino community. Especially if you're from the Caribbean, you don't sleep over anyone’s house. Just that exposure — being on a college campus, being away from home, crying it out, figuring it out — I think it builds skillsets. It builds a level of independence. Those counselors give me that exposure.”

For the grad students she now supervises at the Curley School, Santos says she tries to pass on confidence, something Gutierrez needed at first, despite having worked with students in the past.

“I'd had some experience working with students for sure, but I wasn't as comfortable working with elementary-middle school aged kids,” Gutierrez says. “I was definitely nervous at first! Sugeily did a great job of easing me into the role and the work with students. I started by observing her counseling, where she'd also introduce me to the students as someone new to the school. As I got comfortable, my duties and responsibilities increased. I was able to connect well with the boys, as I was one of the only male figures (teachers/admin) in the middle school.” Eventually, Gutierrez worked with a small caseload of students for individual counseling, conducting counseling groups and counseling lessons, and assisting with the high school transition process, all under Santos’s supervision. 

Santos says Savitz-Romer’s instincts about Gutierrez being a good match for her were right, especially because he’s a doer who understood how to relate with student.

“The other stuff you can teach, but it's hard to teach someone how to connect with kids,” she says. “And I think it just comes from passion and how some people have it easy connecting with others, and he’s one of them. I even gave him a compliment. I said, I've had more kids request to meet with you than I've had in a few years, which means that you're connecting with them in the hallways at lunch. You're not seeing all of these kids for one-on-one counseling, but you're making them feel good somewhere in your day.”

Gutierrez is now a college and career counselor at Everett Alternative High School, just outside of Boston, where he works with students aged 16–21 who are returning to get their high school diplomas before going to college or starting a career. He credits Santos and Savitz-Romer with helping him become a better educator.

“One piece of advice Sugeily gave me was to find my ‘counseling style,’ or counselor identity,” he says. “She emphasized that there’s no one-size-fits all approach to counseling. It's all about learning about yourself and what works for you and your students. Under her guidance I was able to develop my counselor identity” — what he describes as people and relationship oriented, using games and humor to build rapport — “and become more comfortable in my practice.”

From Savitz-Romer, the one who started the full circle moment, he says, he learned to get out of his comfort zone. 

“Through her classes, I practiced my lesson-planning skills and delivered classroom lessons to middle school students,” he says, “something I wasn't comfortable with before.” He also learned that “it's a school counselor’s job to be an advocate and agent of change in their school community.”