FAIRMONT– Fairmont native Jennifer (Seidel) Fingarson was recently named Minnesota’s High School Counselor of the Year and recognized for excellence in public education at an event earlier this month. Fingarson has been working as a counselor at Big Lake High School for 26 years.

A 1986 graduate of Fairmont High School, Fingarson had a positive experience going through the public school system.

“I loved school in Fairmont. I played tennis, I was in band, I loved theater,” she said.

Some of the teachers she remembered having a positive impact on her include Dan Chicos, Linda Gruber and Harm Oldenkamp.

However, she said she didn’t necessarily know what she wanted to do when she went off to college.

“I kind of fell into education and gravitated toward it,” she said.

Initially she got a degree in secondary education and secondary English. She worked as an English teacher for a total seven years, first at Royalton and then at Big Lake High School.

Fingarson said the shift started to happen because she wanted to start a graduate program because in the education field, continuing education credits causes one to move up the pay scale.

“An advisor at St. Cloud State, where I was going to start a program, told me to consider counseling or being a media specialist because I’d still be working with students and in a high school atmosphere,” Fingarson explained.

She said at the time St. Cloud State had a very thriving counseling program so that’s where Fingarson did her additional schooling to get licensed.

“When I finished my Master’s I was lucky. Big Lake was growing and there was a housing explosion going on and I got to move down the hallway and instead of teaching English I was a counselor,” Fingarson said.

There are about 1,000 students at Big Lake High School that Fingarson serves along with two other counselors. In fact, it was those two colleagues, Renae and Morgan, that nominated her for this award through the Minnesota School Counselors’ Association (MSCA).

“In October I received an email from someone from MSCA asking me for a picture and I asked her what it was for– I thought they were putting together a director of all MSCA counselors– and she said it was for my award ceremony on November 4th,” Fingarson recalled.

Upon finding out, Fingarson asked her colleagues and even they hadn’t heard yet that she had won.

Fingarson said there were over 400 people in attendance at the conference, which took place in Duluth. She got to give a speech talking about her experience as a counselor.

“It was fun. I like public speaking. It was really exciting,” Fingarson said.

Speaking to her favorite part about being a school counselor, Fingarson said, “I really love the variety of what I do in the course of the day. I enjoy seeing kids start out as 9th graders who are really fresh to young adulting and then I run into them after they’ve been out of high school for five, 10 or 20 years and it’s crazy to see them productive graduates.”