My D has a long track record working with the school nurse on various clubs and activities. Can the nurse write a recommendation letter? She also has one science and one math teacher willing to write. But I feel the nurse can give a strong letter showing her side beyond academics. Would colleges insist these letters should be from a teacher only?
It can be a supplemental rec if the college accepts those (not all do), but not in lieu of any required teacher recs.
You would have to check the requirements of each school. But in general, yes, they want to hear from those who taught the student, to understand the student’s ability to learn and succeed in coursework.
Many schools accept supplemental recommendations - clubs, activities, bosses, etc. This would fall in that category.
This can be a very important contributor to an application, much like a music supplement. If a website does not indicate that supplemental letters are okay, I would call admissions to explain, and ask if the guidance counselor can include it with the transcript.
My nephew had an excellent letter of recommendation from the school librarian. His view was he went to the library a ton for 4 years and the librarian knew him better than many teachers and in different ways. He may have used it only as a supplemental recommendation but not to replace teacher recommendations. Where it really came in handy though was for various scholarship applications.
My nephew said one advantage of asking the librarian was that no one else did so the person didn’t have a bunch to write. In addition his school has a special graduation thing - the top male and female student (if say the top 15 students are female it would be #16 for top male) get much more attention at graduation then the val/sal though in his case it was the same people. The person they asked would speak about them at graduation. The librarian had never been asked to speak about anyone before and was so proud to be chosen and wanted to do the best job she could. The other girl picked her Italian teacher who was able to give a lot of the speech in Italian which was perfect for the girl’s family visiting from Italy for graduation.