A counselor from Vickery Creek Elementary School is among the six finalists for a top national honor.

“We’re very proud of her,” said Vickery Principal Ron McAllister of Anne Ogilvy. “It’s a very unique honor.”

The American School Counselor Association’s Counselor of the Year program recognizes the best counselors nationwide.

For her part, Ogilvy credited Forsyth’s school district for helping her become a finalist, saying the system is “wonderful to counselors.”

“This is a reflection on our county and it’s a reflection on how well organized and how well supported our community is as far as the school district,” she said.

But this isn’t Ogilvy’s first recognition. In 2009, she was named Counselor of the year for the local school district.

She is also the 2011 Georgia School Counselor Association Elementary School Counselor of the Year.

Ogilvy said she may have drawn national notice through her work with RAMP, or Recognized ASCA Model Program.

The program is designed as a data-driven way for counselors to offer more comprehensive results on students.

About 400 schools nationally are designated RAMP schools, and five of those are in Forsyth, Ogilvy said.

“It’s like a blueprint for how services should be implemented,” she said. “I think a lot of what made me perhaps stand out is because I went through the whole RAMP process three different times.”

To McAllister, however, it’s more than her work with RAMP and the association that makes Ogilvy valuable.

“Her demeanor and her willingness to help and her genuine concern she has for the kids to make sure they’re healthy … she really is concerned about the whole child and the well-being of the child,” he said.

“And how she interacts with adults, she’s real conscious and wants parents to be equipped to have the best parenting skills they can have.”

Ogilvy and other counselors take part in a parent training program at Vickery called Love and Logic, McAllister said.

Through the RAMP program, Ogilvy counsels children in career, self-esteem, social and academic areas.

“I think people forget that counselors are not just there for your feelings,” she said. “We’re teaching test-taking skills, study habits and all the things students need to be successful.”

Ogilvy will attend the February awards banquet in Washington, D.C., with the other finalists, who hail from Smyrna and Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma and Washington.

Regardless of how she fares, Ogilvy said the experience of being nominated, as well as her growth as a counselor, is reward enough.

“It’s a compliment. It’s kind of humbling, I guess, this whole process,” she said. “Everything we’ve done from RAMP to this award, it’s made me more of a leader.”