• About Dan Utrera...

    Position: School Counselor

    Room: Counseling Office

    Phone: (480) 812-6609

    Email: Dan Utrera

    Dan Utrera

    Connect With Us

    Click here to connect with us on our school social media pages, Infinite Campus Portal (assignments and grades), by email, or by phone.

    Welcome!

    I am honored to get to be part of the Weinberg Gifted Academy team since its inception in 2020. I appreciate the blessings and opportunities in working with gifted youth as I was identified as gifted and took part in both gifted classroom and pull-out models as an elementary student.

    Gifted individuals are both unique and talented in ways that can be diverse from their peers in a typical classroom setting. Gifted students have advanced intelligence and process their world in a divergent manner. Yet, they socially and emotionally interact and behave at their real age level; sometimes younger. Many of their struggles can be correlated to the gap between their intelligence and social-emotional development. With some support, they can learn to better understand and manage the socio-emotional aspects of their being.

    My Education and Professional Background

    The majority of my professional experience has been in behavioral health with many years working directly in school settings and organizations serving children. Prior to joining the WGA team, I held a Director of Clinical Services position at a foster care and adoption agency. I am a licensed clinical professional with the AZ Board of Behavioral Health and a certified School Counselor with the AZ Dept. of Education. I have a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Arizona and master's degree in Marriage & Family Therapy from George Fox University.

    My Educational Philosophy

    I am a believer that a child's socio-emotional well-being has a direct influence on one's ability to learn in the academic setting. We are learning from neuroscience that when a child struggles socially and emotionally, they literally have less capacity and energy to devote to learning. I see part of my role as helping students become aware when they are struggling and use regulation strategies to promote healthy socio-emotional well-being. The other part is to help caregivers, parents, and WGA staff, to better understand how they too can promote healthier socio-emotional development for their child. As trusted adult relationships, we have more influence than we may realize during the elementary school years.

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