God Tugs at the Heart of Allison Stapleton
Kaley Israels
February 18, 2010
Filed under News, Secondary News
A student walked into the guidance department to ask for help with her schedule. She stopped in her tracks as she saw a new face, but was quickly reassured by the kind smile. “I’m Miss Stapleton, your new guidance counselor,” she said, welcoming the student into her office and asking her questions about what classes she would like to take. A while later, a senior and her parents walked in to ask about college planning. Miss Stapleton showed them a few college fliers and talked about some financial options.
Yes, Miss Allison Stapleton may be CCA’s newest guidance counselor but it seems that she’s been here for years. Her ready smile is hard to miss and her friendly personality is already scoring high points with both students and parents alike that have been coming to her with a myriad of issues: from counseling issues to hard schedule conflicts, and college applications and planning, to name a few.
“I come to you from the other side of Florida,” she joked with the staff earlier in the school year, when she was first introduced at a staff meeting. By the “other side,” she means central Florida, where she worked as a college recruiter. Although Lakeland does seem like a faraway land, she says her job was and still is helping students find the right college, or with any other counseling needs. At the time, she was a recruiter for Southeastern University, and although she enjoyed her job, she says the one thing it lacked was completion. “I never got to see how they (students) were doing after that first initial contact,” she explained.
As a college recruiter, she often wondered what it would be like to work for a high school. When that thought entered her head, only two Christian schools came to mind, and Calvary Christian Academy was one of them. “It was my college headmaster, Dr. Tony Bryan, who encouraged me to apply to CCA,” said Stapleton, who prayed about it hard and saw God tugging on her heart to work here. The next thing she knew, she was on her way down to the sunnier side of Florida—Fort Lauderdale.
Already she loves the CCA students and staff, and the sense of community. “Right away I sensed something different about the school,” she said. “What I like most about working here is the freedom to talk about God in the workplace. I plan to work here until God tugs on my heart and leads me elsewhere.”