Kelso counselor awarded for growing social-emotional learning

Coweeman Middle School counselor Kali Dalton will have her housing costs paid for a full year after being named 2026 Gold Star Educator of the Year by OnPoint Credit Union for her work promoting social-emotional learning.

Dalton was one of four winners of the OnPoint Prize for Excellence in Education. The first place winners have their rent or mortgage paid for a year and receive a $2,500 prize for their schools. Four runners-up receive $5,000 each, along with $1,500 for their schools.

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"It was just this incredible recognition of lots of blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the work," Dalton said.

She said the school's prize money will go to a fund for supporting Coweeman counselors. Some possible uses include building extra space to give students more access to mental health professionals or giving staff lessons on supporting students through small groups.

Social-emotional learning involves teaching students how to regulate their emotions, practice empathy and establish healthy relationships. It's taught in classrooms at all grade levels in Kelso School District, and much of Dalton's work as a counselor involves the same concepts, she said.

People tend to compartmentalize different areas of the school and think of counseling and education as two entirely separate things, Dalton said, but she wants to promote the importance of collaborating across disciplines.

"It sounds really silly, but our kids are whole kids," she said.

Kali Dalton

Coweeman Middle School counselor Kali Dalton poses with her OnPoint Educator of the Year Award Tuesday, June 2. Dalton was recognized for her work promoting social-emotional learning in Kelso School District.

Improving data collection

This is Dalton's second year as a counselor at Coweeman. Before that, she was the scholarship coordinator at Kelso High School.

High school staff didn't have access to the same data collection system the district's elementary schools used to monitor students' progress in social-emotional learning, which made it difficult to implement similar programs at the high school levels, she said.

Once she heard about that gap, she created her own version of the data collection system using a combination of Google Forms and Google Sheets. The homemade system includes formulas that can help teachers analyze scores and see which students need extra assistance.

It's now in use at the high school and both of the district's middle schools, Dalton said.

She began teaching herself how to use Google Classroom when the district switched to remote learning due to COVID-19. At the time, her work as scholarship coordinator was still done with pencil and paper. With the scholarships due only about a month after school shut down, she had to quickly come up with an alternative system.

From there, she realized how many functions Google programs offered, and branched out into investigating other ways she could use it to benefit the school.

"I joke that I learned everything I know on YouTube," she said.

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