Counseling
Welcome to Mrs. Koch's Counseling Page!
Meet the Counselor
My name is Marlee Koch, and 2026-27 will be my 4th year as the school counselor at Windthorst ISD. I graduated HS from Archer City, and I'm very thankful to do what I love while staying close to my family. Windthorst has been very welcoming to me, and we truly have some of the hardest working and most humble people here at WISD and in this community! After HS, I went to MSU for my bachelor's degree in education and then later transferred to SWOSU to graduate with my master's degree in school counseling. Since starting my career in education, I have been an English teacher for 6 years (teaching grades 6-12), and this is my 6th year being a school counselor. I now live in Archer City with my husband and 2 year old son which means you can find us most likely playing with monster trucks or listening to Blippi songs in our free time. I'm very excited to continue my journey at WISD this year and look forward to meeting more of our students and families!
Mental Health Counseling Services
There are 3 main "levels" of school counseling including tier 1 (all students), tier 2 (small groups), and tier 3 (individual counseling). Services within these levels include classroom lessons, whole school presentations/assemblies, small groups, book clubs, conflict resolution, bullying investigations, individual counseling, crisis intervention, creating safety plans, family/home support, and meeting the individual needs of each student or situation. My passion is to support our students as they grow socially, emotionally, and academically into the best version of themselves, and that looks very different for each student. You can click on the link titled School Counseling Info for more information.
Referrals
As a school counselor, I am limited in the long term services that I can offer. School counselors mainly use the approach known as solution focused, short term counseling. If I'm meeting with a student who I think would benefit from short term counseling (4-6 weeks of individual counseling sessions), I contact parents for consent and keep you updated on the goals we are working on and when we finish. If a student has experienced severe trauma and/or would benefit more from long term counseling, I contact parents to make a referral to the most appropriate provider for your child. Thankfully, we have partnered with Region 9 and TTUHSC to offer long term counseling services with licensed LPCs at no cost to our families. Michaela Fielding is our LPC from Region 9 who comes to our district weekly and takes referrals for individual counseling. TTUHSC offers a program called TCHATT that still offers long term counseling with an LPC for free, but instead of one person coming to our school, your child would receive weekly counseling through Zoom on an Ipad. Since this program is virtual, it is more popular with our secondary students. Aside from these 2 options, there is a variety of specialized providers in Wichita Falls to meet the needs of everybody! If you'd rather your child not be pulled from class to receive counseling at school or want something more specific to meet your child's needs, give me a call, and I'm happy to help you find the right person! Our goal is to make sure every student is comfortable with their counselor and getting what they need from their services.
Academics and CCMR
Part of my role as the school counselor is to also provide support for students academically. The majority of this is through my role in CCMR which stands for College, Career, and Military Readiness. We want all of our students to leave WISD prepared to be successful in the real world. Our students are exposed to multiple career, college, and military options through recruiters who visit our school and events that we attend such as the 8th grade career fair, college tours, the health care expo and tour, Senior Blast-Off, Senior Reality Fair, and the SparkEd Conference. This year, we are introducing a district wide program called Xello that allows students to explore options through age appropriate activities. Aside from coordinating programs and events, I also help students with individual needs such as reorganizing their binder, applying for scholarships, choosing a career or college that would be a good fit, working on skills such as goal setting or time management, or coping with testing anxiety and academic stress. Again, student needs vary drastically in this area, but I am more than happy to help in whatever way I can!