DECATUR – It's not unusual to hear of someone giving up another career to study law. What's less common is someone giving up full-time work as an attorney to become a high school guidance counselor.

After practicing law for 26 years, Maya Fombelle is doing just that: working as a graduate assistant at St. Teresa High School while she finishes her guidance counseling studies. Her eyes were opened to the possibility while helping her children and her friends' children with their college applications. 

"I had to learn everything (during their college application process). Everything had changed," Fombelle said. "It was a real learning curve. I love research and I love to learn about something and master it."

Fombelle also loves being a lawyer, and while she has scaled back her involvement in her law practice at Fombelle and Fombelle LLP in Forsyth, she has no plans to leave law entirely. As a guidance counselor, she'll have summers off and intends to continue working behind the scenes of the practice. She said she worked too hard for her law license to ever give it up.

“Honestly, I don't want to sound cheesy, but ... I felt called to do this,” she said. “I've helped so many kids (as an attorney) that made one bad decision, I wanted to get kids sooner and put them on a positive trajectory.

“At the adolescent stage, their brains aren't fully developed, and if you get them in high school and help them go in a positive direction, maybe they won't end up in a criminal defense attorney's chair. I'd rather see them in the high school guidance office.”

A lot of people have asked her about her career change, she said. This summer, she'll be far enough along in her training to be categorized as an “intern.” She loves St. Teresa and is Catholic, though she grew up elsewhere and is not a graduate. Her children, who were all-state musicians, attended Mount Zion schools in part so that they could join in the district's music programs. “I feel like it all happened for a reason,” Fombelle said. 

Dean Van Diver, who is the guidance counselor at St. Teresa who is mentoring Fombelle, has more than 40 years of experience and is semi-retired. St. Teresa was looking for a guidance counselor and couldn't find one, and contacted him. He's been there for six years, after a career at Griffin High School in Springfield, Riverton schools and Springfield public schools.

“Every school has its own way of doing the guidance program, but it all leads to helping the kids,” Van Diver said. “You're the omsbudsman, the spokesman, for the kids.”

Fombelle, he said, has natural talents and instincts for the work.

“That's not something I have to worry about teaching her,” Van Diver said.

To become a guidance counselor, he said, one needs a master's degree and guidance counseling certificate, and the required classes vary depending on whether the goal is private practice or school counseling.

“I'm 68 and I've been doing this a long time,” Van Diver said. “You have your way of doing things, and I'm trying to impart upon (Fombelle) to join professional organizations and network with other people. No one has ever had too many original thoughts. It's an intriguing profession and I've loved it. (Fombelle) is a good questioner – that's her lawyer skills – and she knows how to get down to the meat of what kids are talking about. She's very passionate about this.”

Valerie Wells
Herald & Review
Staff Writer - Education and Family

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