Ross Toellner is the new student counselor at De Pere High School. He is also a part of the Brown County Board of supervisors as of April 2024. He looks to bring positivity to the school and help with our technology. He answered questions via in person interview.
Q: Where did you go to high school, and then after that where did you go to college?
A: I went to West De Pere High School. Don’t hurt me. And then I went to college at NWTC, UW-Stout, and Lakeland University.
Q: What did you study?
A: NWTC, I did all my gen eds. At UW-Stout, I went for Marketing and Business Education, so I was a Marketing and Business Education teacher. And then at Lakeland, I did my School Counseling Master’s Degree.
Q: What was your favorite subject in high school and college?
A: In high school, it was my business classes. I took every business class that West De Pere had. I loved it, marketing and accounting were two of my favorites. I had a sales class that I really enjoyed in college.
Q: Do you have any past teaching experiences?
A: I was a teacher at Bay Port High School – again don’t hurt me – for 12 years before this as a business teacher.
Q: What hobbies did you participate in during high school?
A: I did nothing in high school. I wouldn’t say I was a bad student, but I had like a 2.7 GPA. I didn’t do my homework. I was horrible at that type of stuff. So, I enjoy when I’m talking to kids and I’m hearing, “Oh I don’t want to do any of these.” Because that was me, but I kept my nose clean and didn’t do anything stupid, but I also wasn’t super into high school. I just wanted to get it done.
Q: What made you choose to be a counselor?
A: I was a business teacher for 12 years and I don’t think there’s a lot of counselors that were teachers. A lot of counselors usually just go into counseling. I really love the academic side of things, I like talking to kids about classes. I love talking to kids about what they’re going to do after high school, the career side of it. So, here at the high school, we do academic career planning talks or ACP talks. We just had one about manufacturing and I got to lead that. And we’re going to do six of those this semester for the school year. When I was at Bay Port High School, I did a program where I brought in 40 guest speakers in a week. So, every hour of the school day, I had a different guest speaker in. I just loved hearing that stuff and having kids be able to hear about careers that they never got a chance to hear about.
Q: What is something that has surprised you about the kids or the school here so far?
A: I think people think when they’re going to go to a different school, and this is for a student or a teacher or a counselor or anything else, that it’s going to be different. And I will be honest, I go through the hallways and walk through the hallways and I could probably match up almost every student to a student at Bay Port. Personalities are kind of the same. They just have the same mojo.
Q: How does your background in politics affect your work here?
A: I’m a Brown County supervisor. I just got that role in April, it’s a two-year term.
I plan to do this often. It’s in the Howard-Hobart area, so I live in Howard. How does my politics affect my work here? Not much. I wouldn’t even call being a Brown County supervisor much of being in politics. I had to run for an election and all that type of stuff, but there isn’t this Republican-Democrat type thing. It’s a nonpartisan position. I had to knock on like 3,000 doors, so I had to super get out of my comfort zone. Just being able to talk to just about anybody. People that would be super upset with me when I knocked on their door, people that were super happy to see me. And so it got me out of my comfort zone, so I have no issue when I’m walking through the hallway striking up a conversation with anybody.
Q: Why did you choose high school instead of other ages?
A: Because you’re actually adults. And I mean that in the real way. Some kids need to grow up a little bit still. They’re not fully mature, and I don’t mean that in like they’re doing stupid things, because believe me, high school teachers and adults do stupid things too. But I mean like they need to grow up in understanding a little bit more of responsibility.
Q: What qualities do you think you bring to the staff?
A: I would say I try to bring a high energy. I try to bring a positive energy.
It’s interesting because when you’ve been at a school for 13 years, you kind of get ingrained. You are part of the life of Bay Port and all of those things. And you learn how to complain about things and how to be like, oh my god, this is so bad. And then you go to a new school and you hear what that school is complaining about and what their aches and pains are. And I get a lot of laughter out of it because so many people will be like, oh my god, our school is this bad or does this bad. There’s no way other schools do this. And you very much realize that every place has that.
