LIVERMORE — Recently retired Spruce Mountain Primary School guidance counselor Grace Eaton still has the passion for her profession.

“I love my job; I love what I do,” she said in a recent interview as she looked back on 14 years as a guidance counselor in area schools. “I love the community. I love the kids.”

Eaton had been a special education teacher in SAD 36 before starting her career as a guidance counselor. She worked with elementary and middle school students.

“With the elementary levels, you’re seeing the developmental place where they are,” said Eaton. “Moving toward the middle school, I loved it. I was sort of hoping I was going to be there as the counselor.

“Then Glen died,” she said, referring to her oldest son, Glen Gilchrist. He died by suicide Dec. 13, 1997.

“After I lost Glen, I went back and worked at the (SAD 36) Intermediate Learning Center. I knew I needed to take some time,” Eaton recalled.

Warren Forbes, then president of the SAD 36 teachers union, recommended she take a sabbatical.

“I felt like I’d make more of a difference with kids as a counselor,” Eaton said. “And to educate staff on suicide awareness.”

So, in between working at the schools and taking her sabbatical, she also did coursework toward a master’s degree in counseling education from the University of Maine at Orono. Additionally, Eaton took the courses she needed to become a licensed professional counselor and did 900 hours of clinical work at Evergreen Behavioral Services.

“You never stop learning,” she said. “It was very important to me.”

Her position as SAD 36 Dean of Students in 2002 saw her meeting with students in grades 6-12 who had social, academic and psychological issues.

“In the counseling education program, you are trained to do all those things,” Eaton said.

She started a student activities group at Livermore Falls High School and civil rights teams at the middle and high school. When the middle school counselor left, Eaton took over the position. She also got her assistant principal certification around that time.

Later, she was a guidance counselor at Livermore Elementary School, and saw the merger of SAD 36 and the Jay School Department into RSU 73.

At all of the schools Eaton worked at, she tried to create a positive climate. In the years since she became a guidance counselor the use of social media has exploded among children, causing problems with bullying.

“Social media is definitely a challenge,” she observed. “They are on it whether their parents know it or not.”

Then, there is the issue of teen suicide.

“There’s so many factors,” she said. “Suicide may be in their family. Depression, mental illness, a loss of something very important to them. It’s multi-faceted. There’s never one reason why someone decides to take their life.

“There’s so much out there that needs to be done, research on suicide and mental illness,” she continued. “People who take their lives may not be mentally ill — it may be what they are going through in their lives at that moment. They’re in a tough spot and sometimes don’t know how to get out.”

In spite of all the job’s drawbacks, there are also positive aspects of being a guidance counselor, Eaton said.

“These kids that come daily to see you and feel good about leaving your office,” she said. Eaton said that some of her students have come back later in their lives and thanked her for helping them through a tough time. Parents have also expressed their gratitude for her work.

“It really does make a difference,” Eaton said.

She decided to retire, in large part so she could spend more time with her husband, Gilbert “Specs” Eaton, who is retired from a long career in education, as well as the rest of her family. Grace and Specs are living on Chebeague Island.

“The staff I will miss, kids I will miss, parents I will miss,” she said. “I said the first year I would go to the island and do nothing. I feel very blessed to be able to retire this early.”

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