After spending a full year of unpaid volunteering, school psychologist Monica Felix discovered her true passion for psychological services.
“When I see that our services are truly helping a student, or a family, or when you see progress, it keeps us going,” Felix said. “It shows us that things are working. I think that with society, we hear so much negativity that we forget that there’s so much good in this world, and so when I see that, and I see it all the time, I see it daily. It just keeps me going.”
Felix started working as a school psychologist 16 years ago in the Santa Clarita and Burbank areas before she transferred to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). As the school psychologist, she focuses on testing students for Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), counseling and mental health support. Felix stepped in as a replacement for former school psychologist Eliana Lichtman, who worked at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School until the end of the 2024-2025 school year.
Felix took a similar one-day schedule as Lichtman’s, where Lichtman’s schedule was reduced from three days a week to one around December 2023. Felix is on campus every Thursday and every other Tuesday, as LAUSD school psychologists work as itinerant staff and are considered part-time on campus, compared to other districts that have school psychologists who come in five days a week.
“My number one goal is to survive all of the work when I’m only here once a week,” Felix said. “That is my realistic goal. My second is to do the things that school psychologists are trained for, that we generally don’t get to do because we’re so busy with testing and counseling. So whether it be reviewed academic material or scholarship materials, or just anything outside of the testing and counseling realm.”
Besides her jobs while she was a teenager, Felix’s career was centered around psychology.
It all started in a lab during her undergrad at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she found out her boss was attending a program at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) to be a school psychologist. Felix showed curiosity and interest in the topic. Afterwards, she asked her uncle, who worked at a public school, about their school psychologist. She was first referred to the counselor, who then redirected her to the school psychologist.
“So even my uncle, who was a teacher, didn’t know who the school psychologist was. The counselor did,” Felix said. “So that’s very, very common, and I do like to break that stereotype. But again, you’re only here once a week, which is very hard.”
When Felix met the school psychologist, she asked if she could shadow her and see what she did, doing so every Thursday for a whole year. Watching the school psychologist work intrigued Felix, solidifying her fascination with the profession.
Felix’s transition to DPMHS has been a stimulating experience. Felix arrived with the expectations of working with high school students more often and helping them figure out what they wanted to do with their lives, their career paths. The journey and time here at DPMHS has inspired her and she looks forward to what the rest of the school year will bring.
“(DPMHS) is a very unique school and that is what makes me the most interested,” Felix said. “There are so many creative students here. Things that I never would’ve imagined to think or to become or to even say. That is spectacular in my mind, the endless amounts of entertainment and knowledge awareness, that’s what I’m looking forward to. I can’t get enough of that. It’s just everywhere in this school.”
