Brian Coleman
By Marilyn Ferdinand, DePaul Magazine: Fall 2019
When Brian Coleman interviewed for his first job as a school counselor at Jones College Prep High School, a CPS selective enrollment school in the South Loop, he was asked why he should be hired. “I blurted out, ‘Because I’m a unicorn!’”
Coleman admits he didn’t exactly know what he meant by that at first. Nonetheless, he worked his way to an answer: “I said my unique skills, passion, expertise, experiences made me a special candidate—a kind who may not walk through the door again.”
When Coleman began work at Jones, he was given a unicorn figurine. “It’s a running joke here and a core component of my brand as a counselor,” Coleman says.
Now chair of the counseling department, his aim is to help students find, accept and use what is special about them to achieve their dreams.
Department Chair, Generalist School Counselor at Jones College Prep
MEd School and Community Counseling 2014
Coleman, charismatic and enthusiastic, seemed destined for a life in the performing arts when he came to Chicago from his hometown of Indianapolis to attend college as a theatre major. Near the end of his undergraduate work, he participated in a program at About Face Theatre that took him into high schools to perform pieces about LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. As a gay man, Coleman found the experience of talking with students about their gender and sexual identities a life-changing experience that made him rethink his career goals.
“I found myself at an educational professional crossroads where aligning myself to a mission and vision that really meant something to me was very, very important. DePaul could name that in a way that I found really profound,” Coleman recalls.
“I found myself at an educational professional crossroads where aligning myself to a mission and vision that really meant something to me was very, very important. DePaul could name that in a way that I found really profound.”
Jones enrolls students from across Chicago, creating a highly diverse student population—racially, ethnically and socioeconomically.
Coleman outlines the challenges the students face: “Many were one of [the top students], if not the top student, in their eighth-grade class, and now they come into a high school with a lot of students from a lot of different areas, a lot of different backgrounds, who were also the top students at their schools.”
To ease the transition, Coleman co-leads a mentorship program at the school that operates not only during the year, but also over the summer to orient incoming freshmen to the climate and culture at Jones.
