Employment History:

Published Works:

Public Speaking Experience:

Why F is an Expert:
I am an expert on the adjustment problems that foreign exchange students have coming from their countries to our way of life. That’s where my great interest lies. When I moved I had a box marked “Precious Things: Don’t Throw Away without Reading.” It was notes and things that students sent to me saying, “Mrs. Fread, please call me into your office; I need to talk to you.” I never turned a kid down if I could help it.

Best Advice:
When I hear young women who are currently in college, maybe their junior year, tell me that they are majoring in counseling, I tell them, “Don’t go into counseling right after graduation. Get into the teaching field, the business field or someplace where you have experience so that you don’t fall hook, line and sinker for everything people say to you.” You get an inexperienced counselor and somebody comes up with a good line, “None of this was my fault.” Well, maybe it wasn’t, but you have to establish the fact that while it’s not necessarily their fault, they may not be wholly blameless. There are two sides to every story.

Passionate about:
Integrity – when I say something or give advice, I want to be sure that I am absolutely truthful when I deal with other people.

Biography Excerpt:
When she looks back over her 45-year career of teaching and counseling, Phyllis Fread fondly remembers individual students. Recalling their fears, uncertainties and lack of confidence, she is grateful for the opportunity she had to provide them with direction as she pursued her career with passion and enthusiasm. Mrs. Fread did not start in counseling; she began as a language instructor. Inspired by an aunt who taught French, she received a bachelor’s degree in French and Spanish from Cornell College in 1948, and taught French in Washington and Oregon before finishing her career teaching at Umpqua Community College. At the height of her academic career, she served as the dean of students at Roseburg High School.

     

Cambridge Who's Who: What would you like to promote most about yourself or your business?  
PHYLLIS J. FREAD :  Knowing that, whether they know it or not, you have given students some words of wisdom that will hold them together and keep them going in the direction they want to go. I have worked with them to use the special attributes that they possess. I’ve taught people to draw on their own special inner strength, their inner core.

What is your greatest professional accomplishment to date?
It’s in the AFS area [American Field Service, student foreign exchange program]. I had a girl who came from a tiny town north of Quebec City and didn’t speak a word of English. Since I had been a French teacher and could speak French, I took Geneviève and translated everything that was said to help her understand it in English. When she left here at the end of the school year, she was speaking English, not perfectly but understandably. That must have been 15 years ago. She went to school in Montreal to study hotel management before returning to complete intern work out here in the West. She’s now in school in Austria studying to be a teacher of French, German and English in a language school. She’d been to see me and was dropped off at my house. When it came time for her to leave, I wondered how she was going to get home. She had gone on the Internet and found out about a bus that picked people up from the McDonald’s down the street and went to Portland. I couldn’t believe it, but we took Geneviève down to McDonald’s at 7 o’clock. She held up a sign that said “Bus to Portland” and stood out in front. The bus came, she got on, and off she went! I just think about if I hadn’t spent time with her. She cried all the time when she first arrived and wasn’t getting anything out of her experience. But I did take the time and the effort to give her a little tender loving care along with my “sterling” advice. I just feel good about her and the fact that I am still in touch with her. It’s simplistic, but that’s the kind of thing I excel at, counseling people

What is the most significant issue facing your profession today?
It’s the drugs and the horribleness that these young people have put themselves into because they expect something for nothing. People have to deal with what drugs are doing to young people who think that’s the only answer; it’s so sad. And I counseled during the 1960s – it wasn’t any picnic then, but it’s 10 times worse now!