Our School Counseling Team

School psychologists, a social worker, and two school counselors form the Student Services team at Weyanoke Elementary. These are highly trained and experienced people. Each discipline has unique skills and training. Together, school social workers, school psychologists, and school counselors provide a stronger team than any single profession could provide on its own. The students, parents, staff, and school benefit from the student services team.

School Counselors

FCPS K-12 school counseling programs strive to empower students to become independent and productive individuals through a developmentally age-appropriate program providing academic, social, emotional, and college and career counseling services. The belief that all students can achieve academic success is a touchstone of the program.

As elementary school counselors, their primary objective is to assist students in reaching their potential to become effective learners. Their goal is to complement the learning environment in the classroom by using a child-centered, preventative, and developmental approach.

Counseling will be conducted with students individually and in small groups, when requested by parents and teachers and determined appropriate. This service is short-term, voluntary, and confidential. Parent notification is given to any extended individual or group counseling. There will also be monthly classroom guidance lessons focusing on student success.

Our School Counseling Services Program

Our goal is to support students, teachers, parents, and our community with a range of routine and responsive services such as: 

Classroom Guidance

• Every other week, our counselor presents a guidance lesson to every class. Topics include communication and problem solving, study and testing skills, goal setting and career awareness. 

Consultant Services

• To Parents, Teachers, School Staff, and the Community

Small-Group Counseling

• Designed to support students in managing conflicts peacefully, expressing emotions appropriately, coping with difficult family changes, learning friendship and other social skills 

Short-term Personal Counseling 

• To assist students in managing a crisis or difficult situations.
• This counseling cannot replace clinical counseling but is designed to briefly support students during a challenging time.

Ms. Skorski serves students in grades 1, 3 and 5 and is at Weyanoke full time.

Ms. Coleman serves students in grades K, 2 and 4. She is at Weyanoke full time.

School Psychology Services

School psychologists are mental health specialists with knowledge of child development, the psychology of learning, behavior management and intervention, monitoring the progress of students, and program evaluation. School psychologists apply this knowledge using a problem-solving approach to help bring about positive changes in the learning environment, attitude, and motivation. Services offered by the school psychologist may be provided directly to the student or indirectly by working with teachers, parents, and other caregivers; however, all services provided by the school psychologist are intended to enhance the academic and social-emotional success of students. Minimum requirements to be a school psychologist include a 60-hour master's degree program and a one-year full-time internship; many FCPS school psychologists hold a doctoral degree. 

Social Work and Support Services

School social workers focus on family and community factors that influence learning. They provide intensive services for students facing issues that pose risks to their academic success such as parent divorce and separation, poverty, truancy, chronic illness, mental health problems, conduct problems, child abuse, etc.All FCPS social workers hold a Master of Social Work (MSW) or Master of Social Science (MSS) degree; many have earned a Doctorate of Social Work (DSW) degree. All school social workers are licensed by the Virginia Department of Education. The majority of the staff is clinically licensed by the Commonwealth of Virginia Board of Social Work (LCSW) or in other jurisdictions and trained to provide mental health services in any setting.

Our school social worker is Pilar Hackman. She is at Weyanoke full time and can be reached at [email protected] or 703-813-5408