Jodi Quinn, Student Services Secretary, Long Reach High School

March 15th, 2017

Jodi Quinn is described as the “rock” of Long Reach High School’s Student Services office. “Jodi is our office’s backbone. I bounce ideas off her. She keeps us organized and is always willing to go the extra mile to help our students, parents and counselors,” said Brett Moore, Long Reach school counselor and instructional team leader.

In a nutshell, Quinn said, “My job is to help whomever I can in any way. That’s what I’m here for. If I have knowledge to help you along, I’ll share that. That’s what drives me: helping people and getting to the end result, ultimately graduation.” Quinn loves the liveliness of the office, where on any given day she might take phone calls, support families going through the college application process, collect missing homework and more. She’s even learned some Spanish, so Long Reach’s Hispanic families feel welcome.

In just three years at Long Reach, Quinn has made a name for herself as a go-to staff member. “Jodi’s here to help our families. She’ll find the solution and be a part of the helping process,” Moore said. Quinn shared: “I am the person between the student or parent and the counselor who sometimes has to remain calm, diffuse the situation and get them to the right person.”

Quinn has a family first approach, at work and in her personal life. She was a client services manager for a payroll company, but left to raise her five kids, a set of twins and triplets one year apart. She took on a variety of jobs as her children went through the Howard County school system, but focused more on “Team Mom” and supporting her children’s schools. Quinn recently returned to fulltime employment, at Long Reach, now that her kids are all in college.

Quinn’s background of raising a large family proves useful every day in the office. From a practical standpoint, she has plenty of experience getting kids into college, which she shares with Long Reach families. More abstractly, Quinn said, “You’ll hear people say I’m the ‘mom’ because I think of the whole picture. I can think about how has this happened before or in my own life with my children. I try to nurture the situation with parents, students or colleagues. That’s what I enjoy most about what I do here.”