{"id":155494,"date":"2025-11-27T10:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T10:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/155494\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T10:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T10:28:13","slug":"skowhegan-guidance-counselor-dan-riley-helps-students-dream-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/155494\/","title":{"rendered":"Skowhegan guidance counselor Dan Riley helps students \u2018dream big\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Riley once likened a student to a white wolf he had spotted in Yellowstone National Park. <\/p>\n

The student had been dealt a difficult hand, Riley wrote in a letter to Bowdoin College, but he was brilliant. Remarkable. The kind of student you don\u2019t want to let slip by.<\/p>\n

In Riley\u2019s 28 years as a guidance counselor at Skowhegan Area High School, former students have earned degrees, gotten jobs and, in one case, accepted a full-ride to Bowdoin. For some, Riley is the only one who has taken an interest in their futures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that I am most driven to do is even the odds,\u201d Riley said. \u201cGive a kid a fighting chance to be something different than what they come from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting in his window-lit office with glasses perched high on his forehead, Riley, 56, rifles through a stack of questionnaires that will help him get to know the new students in his caseload of more than 200. He gives extra attention to them and seniors approaching graduation.<\/p>\n

MacKenzie Dawe, a Skowhegan alum and first-year student at the University of Maine at Orono, said after she applied to college, Riley called the schools to advocate for her acceptance.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really cared about how I was doing,\u201d said Dawe, 18. \u201cHe made the high-school experience a lot easier for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dan Riley is a guidance counselor at Skowhegan Area High School. (Rich Abrahamson\/Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n

Riley works doubly hard to encourage students who are struggling. What most students need isn\u2019t sympathy, he says, but someone in their corner who wants them to succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like helping the kids dream big, no matter where they come from,\u201d he said. \u201cMy name is not Mr. Rogers; it\u2019s Mr. Riley.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Riley once likened a student to a white wolf he had spotted in Yellowstone National Park. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":{"0":"post-155494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}