Ms. Smith: Not Just a Counselor

Most students know Elena Smith as a counselor at our school. She has been a counselor at MBHS for 26 years. Ms. Smith loves to see when students reach their goals, especially when she has worked with them to achieve those goals. 

Ms. Smith is from San Luis Obispo and has lived here her whole life. She enjoys traveling, dancing, and doing creative projects. She loves hanging out with family and her husband. Ms. Smith says that her parents made her who she is and helped her pursue what she is passionate about. 

Ms. Smith attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and majored in Sociology. When Ms. Smith was in college, a mentor reached out to her and explained what a counselor is to her. Ms. Smith enjoyed being in the school environment and working with young people. When asked what was the best advice she received in college that had an impact on her college experience, she said ¨I had a meeting with the Director of Student Affairs at Cal Poly and he told me you have strikes against you, you're a minority and a woman....education, knowledge and perseverance is the key to being a successful person.¨ Before she started working at MBHS she was in charge of a peer education program and worked with students county wide. If Ms. Smith didn’t become a counselor she would have liked to go into the medical field. 

More than two decades ago, two students at Morro Bay High School asked Ms. Smith to start a dance group because they knew that Ms. Smith had dance experience. This was an exciting opportunity and ever since then Ms. Smith has been the director of the Dance Fusion troupe. She loves to see the steps to building a dance piece and seeing the dancers perform it at a higher level. She also loves to see the camaraderie and relationships that the dancers build together. Ms. Smith’s favorite memories coaching the dance team over the years are their dance trips, in particular the very first one they took to NYC. She said ¨It was unforgettable.  We took classes at Broadway Dance Center, Alvin Ailey and STEPS.  Three top notch studios in the country. We saw Broadway shows and experienced the city.

Not only does Ms. Smith teach the MBHS students dance, she has also been a dancer since the age of four years old. She studied at the San Francisco Ballet from the age of 11 to 16, and danced professionally at the Civic Ballet as the principal dancer for 29 years all throughout high school until a couple of years after college. She has also been teaching dance classes at the Academy of Dance studio in San Luis Obispo twice a week for more than 30 years.