Rocky Mountain school counselor: Sally Bernhisel transforms a love of helping students into new position

If one were to glance at Sally Bernhisel’s family tree and her long career in education, you’d never know that she didn’t ever want to be a teacher. She doesn’t love standing in front of a large group of students.

But what the new counselor at Rocky Mountain Middle/High School does enjoy is working with and helping students, and that has led her to her current position.

The daughter of longtime Lovell Elementary School teachers Carvel and Patty Despain, Bernhisel can count at least 10 family members in education: both of her parents, husband John, his parents, a sister and brother and three children.

And yet…

“Ironically, I never wanted to be a teacher. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher,” Bernhisel said. “But I think it’s because I’m more of a one-on-one, two-or-three kids rather than 17 in the room kind of person. If I get over three people in front of me, I’m a mess.”

A 1985 graduate of Lovell High School, Sally Despain went off to BYU in Provo, where she met John Bernhisel. The couple married and transferred to Utah State University, where both earned degrees in education and started their family.

John graduated from USU in 1989 and was hired to teach science at Rocky Mountain High School. Sally did her student teaching in District One – Byron, Cowley and Deaver – from January through May of 1990 and graduated that spring.

Along the way, daughter Alyson was born, followed by Emily, Michael and Melissa, and Sally delayed her entry into the workforce to be a stay-at-home mom for several years.

“I stayed home with my kids when they were little, which was great. I wanted to do that,” she said.

With all of the kids in school, Bernhisel was hired as an at-risk coordinator – a student advocate – in 2008 at Rocky Mountain High School, then located in Byron. She held that paraprofessional job for 14 years, working closely with students who needed some extra help.

“I just love that title. Student advocate sounded so much better than at-risk para,” she said.

It was a perfect position for an educator who loves to help students.

“I loved working one on one with the students,” Bernhisel said. “I loved hearing their stories and helping them take ownership in their own success, and that’s the job that told me I wanted to be a school counselor, because there was so much more to their education than homework, and I just loved that part of it. Plus, I loved math.

“I love math. I would love to sit and do math problems with people. I had to do all subject areas, but math, of course, kids really struggle with sometimes, and I love math.”

While not a special education teacher dealing with IEPs (Individualized Education Programs), as a student advocate Bernhisel worked with students who were “not doing as well as they should, academically.” Some would be from broken homes or faced socio-economic challenges. Some just needed help getting their ducks in a row, though they were capable.

“I had my own room, and I had about two to four students who would come in every single period, and we would focus on what they were missing, or what was coming up,” she said. “We’d do test prep and stuff like that. I did a lot of like organizing, like ‘where’s your social studies notebook? OK, well that has to be here.’ So tutoring is what I did all the time.

“The rewarding part was seeing kids who came to me failing several classes, then passing the classes the rest of the four years. So quite often, not always, but quite often, when a student was assigned to me, I kept them the rest of high school.”

Career coordinator

In 2022, Bernhisel was hired as the first district career coordinator for School District No. 1, working out of the district office in Cowley and traveling between Cowley and Burlington.

“As a district career coordinator, I focused on helping students think future forward, helping them think about what they’re going to do after they graduate and then getting them the resources or the experiences so that they could make better informed choices,” Bernhisel said. “We did things like bring professionals into the school, and they would talk about their jobs.”

The work included setting up job shadow opportunities and holding career fairs at the elementary, middle school and high school levels.

“I would do three career fairs a year,” she said. “I taught lessons in every classroom in the district. I taught a career type lesson. I had high school students taking interest inventories and work environment (surveys), all those kind of tests that you take to decide what would make you happiest. I had that going, just everything to do with what came next.”

Carin Johnson is the new district career coordinator, and Bernhisel said she hopes the district can continue to write grants to support the position.

School counselor

While working as the district career coordinator, Bernhisel went “back to school,” taking online classes through Southeastern Oklahoma State University to earn a master’s degree in school counseling.

She earned her degree in December of 2024, working an internship with longtime Rocky Mountain counselor Tim Jones from August through December of that year. She was hired upon his retirement in the spring of 2026.

Asked about her duties as the RMMS/HS counselor, Bernhisel joked that she’s “figuring that out.” She said she’s busy with ACT testing and WorkKeys assessments, as well as social/emotional learning called character education using the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.” She called the character education “helping kids learn how to think before they do.”

She’s also working with FASFA federal student aid for college-bound students and making sure student transcripts are in order as students work toward graduation. And while she is not a licensed professional counselor, she is willing to help students cope if they’re having a bad day or struggling emotionally, noting that she can see a student for a few times but would then pass him or her off to a professional mental health counselor.

A love of helping

What it all boils down to is that Sally Bernhisel loves helping young people, hoping to make a difference with even a few of them. She recounted the starfish story where a young girl saw a beach full of starfish and started throwing them back into the ocean one by one. When an old man chastised her for her actions, saying, “What are you doing? You can’t make a difference. Look, there’s thousands of starfish. You can never do that,” she replied as she threw another starfish back into the ocean, “Yes, but I just made a difference for that one.”

That story sums up Sally Bernhisel perfectly.

“That’s what it is. If I can make a difference for one, then I feel like my life has purpose,” she said. “And the older I get, I realize we just want our life to have purpose, to be meaningful, and it’s meaningful to me to see somebody succeed, someone gain confidence, someone understand their value and go forth in society as an asset. We all want our kids to be assets.

“Isn’t that our goal? We have our children, and it’s just let us raise them so that when they go out in the world they’re a benefit to others. That’s what we want. So this job allows me to do that.”

Asked who influenced her to help others, Bernhisel noted, “I would say probably my parents. They were both educators. They would come home with stories of kids that just were really taking off or succeeding where they had been. My mom, especially, who did reading recovery, told so many stories of working with a kid one on one for two years, and they were finally at grade level. I think that would be the thing that made me realize that if I only help one person, I’ve made a difference.

“I come from a long line of service-oriented people, and service is kind of broad, but we want to be helpful in society. That’s who we are.”

She also credits former counselor Jones with helping her move into the job, not only working with her during her internship but also serving as her mentor and showing her the ropes last spring during his last weeks on the job. And to this day Jones is a phone call away if she has a question.

She also noted Burlington counselor Phil Olson, who she said is her official school mentor, Rocky Mountain Elementary counselor Lindsey Sponsel and her RMMHS principal Betsy Sammons.

“I have a lot of people that are willing to help me figure things out, and Betsy’s been great,” Bernhisel said. “She never expects me to know something that she hasn’t actually told me, which is really nice.”

Less than four months into her new job, Bernhisel is loving it.

“Keep it on the down low,” she said with a smile, “but I love this job so far. I mean, I’m not perfect. I’m learning a lot, and I’ve missed things I should have (done) that I just don’t know yet. But I love this job. I wake up excited to come to work.

“I’ll be honest. Sometimes I’ve had to talk to kids, and it’s hard. It’s really hard. They’re going through tough stuff. Kids go through tough things. That’s life, and I mean abnormal things. But if kids are comfortable coming and telling you something that’s really private, but also they just need to unload, I take that as an honor that they would allow me to hold that information for them and share it with them.”