By Staff Writer: Rachel Cichon
Imagine coming into work in the morning and not having the slightest idea what awaits you that day or what time you will get to leave and head home. You spend the workday surrounded by whirring machines, receiving a seemingly endless array of e-mails, faxes and phone calls. The door to your office opens constantly as students, teachers and security guards alike ask you to aid them with all sorts of problems – from forgotten locker combinations to copies of transcripts to locating students that could be anywhere in the school. This is the life of Howell High School’s building secretary, Mrs. Cathy Severs, a woman with a rigorous job and an inspiring outlook on the work she does.
“I don’t look at anything as being difficult. Every day is a new challenge. There are days that I go home and am totally exhausted. Most people probably don’t realize that, but most days are constant, you’re going constantly. But it’s an accomplishing feeling, because most of the time I’m connecting people,” Mrs. Severs says of her job.
Mrs. Severs’ title of building secretary essentially means that she is the head secretary at HHS. She works with all of the school’s head administrators, but her primary administrator is HHS principal, Mr. Jason Schrock. She also helps resolve problems between students and staff and help them find solutions and answers to any question or problem brought to her.
“No two days are the same. Ever,” Mrs. Severs says. “It just depends on the day. There is a lot of communication with emails from the staff. There are parents coming in, people coming in. I help alleviate and answer questions from students and parents that don’t necessarily warrant Mr. Schrock.”
Mrs. Severs grew up in Illinois, where she used to work as an executive administrative assistant to presidents and vice presidents of a company. Eventually the company closed down and they could not find a comfortable position for Mrs. Severs, so she began working at a children’s school.
About ten years ago, Mrs. Severs and her family uprooted and moved to Michigan. It didn’t take long for her to find a new job. When she enrolled one of her children in Howell, she mentioned the former work she had done at the children’s school, and requested to be notified if a position became available. Fortunately, she was told that HHS did in fact have an opening, and Mrs. Severs took the job that she has kept to this day.
Education was not always Mrs. Severs’ chosen career. In fact, she once attended cosmetology school. Ironically, her teacher there told her that she had always believed that Mrs. Severs would make an excellent teacher. Although Mrs. Severs is not actually a teacher, her position at the school allows her to help students succeed and move on towards a promising future, a paramount duty of any school official.
“I like to watch people succeed and help them make the right changes in their lives,” Mrs. Severs says. “We’re here to help and make you good productive citizens.”
One of Mrs. Severs’ passions is helping students receive the best grades possible and leave with a good transcript. She recognizes that a transcript will never go away, and stresses to students the importance of getting as many credits as possible in order to appeal to future potential employers.
“A lot of times, kids that aren’t doing well in certain classes come to me, and I encourage them to do the best job possible. Your transcript is forever, that doesn’t go away. Kids come in and say they don’t need a class, but that ‘F’ is forever,” says Mrs. Severs. “Nowadays at your age you don’t know or understand that there are employers on a daily basis asking for education verification and they want to see your transcript, your GPA, and your attendance record.”
Mrs. Severs gives a lot of aid to those in Credit Recovery. The counselors sign students up for credit recovery, and she signs the forms and assigns them to a teacher. She has a Google drive document with a master list of all the students enrolled, and she adds Credit Recovery to their PowerSchool. Although she is expected to leave work at 4 p.m., she often stays later to help students in Credit Recovery.
The care and genuine concern that Mrs. Severs has for each and every student is evident. She is able to name almost every student by name as they file into her office and knows enough about them to ask them specific questions about what’s going on in their lives. Former students who have not been to HHS in years are instantly recognized by her, and current ones are welcome to walk in and talk with her.
“[Mrs. Severs] has to juggle a lot in the main office. I know one of her favorites is interaction with the students. She really takes an interest in those who come to her and I know they appreciate it a great deal,” says Mrs. Jill Sweeso, another of the building’s secretaries who shares the main office with Mrs. Severs.
Much of the quality support exhibited by Mrs. Severs stems from her tight-knit family life. She’s married with three children. Two of them still live at home, along with one of her step-sisters. One of her children recently graduated from Michigan State University, and her two others, both Howell alumni, are currently attending the school.
The family stays close by spending time together and was kept especially busy while the children were in high school, as they planned around everyone’s different schedules in order to keep up on the children’s extracurricular activities, such as soccer and hockey.
One of Mrs. Severs favorite hobbies is watching movies, both at the theater and at home. She isn’t a huge fan of TV, but one of her favorite shows is The Voice, because the coaches give nice and positive constructive criticism, instead of being rude as on other talent shows. Her preference for support and optimism is reflected both in her relationships with students and her own children.
“At this age, kids need someone to be honest and open with them,” she says. “I believe a fundamental of parenting is being there for the kids.”
Each morning, Mrs. Severs comes into the office and logs onto her computer, the desktop of which features a tranquil tropical view of an isolated island paradise, which she keeps on all year to keep her calm. Occasionally, Mrs. Severs has to admit that she would prefer to be sitting in the sun on that island.
The first thing she does each day is open her e-mail and view Mr. Schrock’s calendar to get an idea of his availability for the day. This way, if anyone comes in and wants to speak with him, she’ll quickly know where he is and if he has time to see them.
Mrs. Severs keeps PowerSchool open on her computer at all times, so that she can quickly find information about a student’s location. Other than these simple things, there is no guaranteed structure of how her day will go.
“You can’t plan a day around here. There is no planning. You can attempt, but it’s crazy here all of the time. It’s difficult to plan anything, you can’t get nervous or stressed out,” says Mrs. Severs.
To enable her to help anybody with any given problem, Mrs. Severs has an arsenal of resources and gadgets available within her cubicle. Her computer, two printers, one black and white and one in color, a copier, radios and a recently updated phone system that allows her to communicate with any administrator in the district.
Mrs. Severs also has an abundance of binders, many have to do with credit recovery, but one, a giant Goliath of a binder, is filled with every reference source imaginable. This binder sits open just to the left of her computer, ready to offer information such as the school calendar, staff payroll, locker locations, and the schedules of each teacher and security guard.
More reference sheets are tacked up around the walls of her computer and her desk space is full of office utensils and useful supplies. Despite this, she seems organized and prepared, and readily handles every problem thrust at her, never turning someone away without helping them first.
Mrs. Severs’ duties are constant. She approves posters, locates students and calls them down on the loudspeaker, prints out transcripts, finds the owner of missing items, refills Kleenex boxes, and works hard to appease the floods of parents and students coming in with concerns.
An enormous help to Mrs. Severs is a program on her computer, the ShoreTel Communicator. This system allows her to look up any teacher’s name – even if all she has is a first name or a rough spelling of it – and find their e-mail and phone number. All she has to do is click on the number and it immediately sends them a call.
In her position, Mrs. Severs spends a lot of time dealing with angry parents and students, but she has no trouble staying calm and reasonable with them.
“I don’t let things bother me. I don’t take them personally. You can’t. Usually when a parent calls me, they’re just venting, and eventually they’ll understand,” Mrs. Severs says on staying calm when facing a difficult situation. “To me, it’s a revelation when a parent is here waiting to pick up a student and they go, ‘I never really realized how busy you guys are,’ and it’s nice because parents will get upset if we can’t get to the phone, and it’s just that we’re a community and there’s a total of probably 150 staff members, and this is like the main hub,” she says.
It’s no doubt that Mrs. Severs deals with a lot, but she manages to stay completely on top of every situation and is often dealing with several issues at once. When asked what her favorite aspect of the job is, her answer, after careful deliberation, was: “I like everything. I like the people. I like the kids. Every day you learn something new.”
Although HHS would likely fall apart without the aid and care of Mrs. Severs, she remains modest about her role, and values each of her fellow administrators, guards, teachers and secretaries.
“I look at everyone as equals. I’m here to do the same thing as everyone else,” Mrs. Severs says. “It takes a whole team to get the job done.”
Mrs. Severs is a fundamental pillar holding up Howell High School, whether she is willing to admit to it or not. It is a rare thing to find someone so accomplished that also possesses strong degrees of kindness, modesty and love for what she does, but all of these traits and more are abundantly present within Mrs. Severs.
Any student of Howell High facing any conceivable problem should not hesitate to come to Mrs. Severs for help, advice or any form of information needed. She has a keen affinity for communicating with students and genuinely wants to help each and every one of them. After just a few moments with Mrs. Severs, a student can guarantee that they will walk out of the office feeling fulfilled.
“I look at my job as an opportunity to make a positive impact every day. I’m not necessarily in a classroom educating, but I think that daily, positive interactions with students and staff can help make the day better,” says Mrs. Severs.
