As school starts again, freshmen begin their journey at Floyd Central, and seniors
prepare to leave, but the teachers continue teaching as they do every year. But for every
teacher, there was also once a student who has gone through their own freshman and
senior years.
“I started my freshman year of high school in 2007, and I went to North High School.
From my middle school, North High School was a big school, though not quite as large as ours—about 1,600 students,” said art teacher Lauren Baker. “As far as my experience, I know I had braces. I was a little bit shy as a freshman; that transition can be intimidating, but I knew I was passionate about art. So that was something that really helped propel me and find my place in high school.”
While some teachers were able to fully reflect on their passions, others reflect that
the stress had been a more memorable part of freshman year. A new environment is able
to form mixed emotions about the upcoming school year.
“My freshman year was stressful, especially because my family moved in the
middle of the year. We lived in Indiana to start with, and then I went to New Albany High School for part of my freshman year, but then I moved to Florida,” said . “I had to go to a different school, so I was making new friends. The expectations were very different, and freshman year was just a stressful time in general.”
Making new friends can be a scary part of high school because being a freshman is a
major change in itself.
“My freshman year, it was a little scary because it was high school and I was a
freshman. You get the new experience, and I remember meeting new friends. Then, I
played soccer during my freshman year, so I think it was making new friends that was
scary,” said Spanish teacher Vivian Angeles.
Not only is freshman year a significant part of high school, but senior year is also a momentous time as well. Being a senior means planning for the future while still keeping up with friends and classes.
“My senior year, I was very much taking classes I was passionate about. I took three
art classes, and I’d been involved with the AP programs leading up to that point. I was very fortunate that over 30 of my hours transferred for college. I’d really decided at that point that I wanted to stay in the area and go to the University of Evansville,” said Baker. “I made good friends, who were still friends today, with a foreign exchange student from Brazil. That was interesting for me to get to know more about her culture. I went and visited her in her home country.”
While some teachers focused on high school classes and friends, some had already
moved on to college before their time in high school was over.
“I did early college when I was in my junior and senior years of high school. I didn’t
take any classes on the high school campus, so I was only on a college campus. It was a
program we had through Florida, so it was very different from the normal senior experience. It was still a time that I was excited for. I was getting ready to move on to a new chapter of life,” said Jackson.
The start of a new chapter is one of the reasons senior year is anticipated, but there
are also many other events that seniors have to look forward to.
“Senior year is exciting and fun, but also very stressful. I placed 2nd at the wrestling
state championships as a junior, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to achieve more.
My senior year was also a time in my life that I first realized I was at a cross road as I was
making the decision of what I wanted to do next,” said science teacher Brandon Sisson.
College is not the only example of change when teachers reflect on their high school experience.Technology has been a change that has slowly built up to popularity. “When I was in high school, the iPhones were around. However, I didn’t have a smartphone, so a lot of the interactions that I had with my friends would be planned. At school we would use Google Chat or G chat. We had Chromebooks and would decide when we were going to meet up with each other, but it was much more in-person activities with my friends versus connecting
virtually, like I feel a lot of my students do today,” said Baker.
Technology has had many changes when it comes to communication, but it
also affected education as a whole. It has created more opportunities that weren’t
possible in past years.
“The biggest difference now is that seniors have more opportunities than when I was in school. I did early college, that was pretty great opportunity, but for the most part there are more classes available for students to take,” said Jackson. “With the expansion of technology, there are more opportunities to have support in the classes that you’re taking.”
Students not only have the advantage of technology, but they have also had some
disadvantages when it comes recent times. With many current tragedies, it can make
it harder for modern high school students to compete mentally with past generations.
“You had more privacy because social media wasn’t as prevalent. It was much easier
to go under the radar when it came to what you were doing with your own personal life. I would say that my experience was probably easier in a way because we didn’t have the same anxiety that today’s students have with exposure from Covid. Unfortunately, all the mass shootings that we’ve had throughout our nation, I didn’t have those same type of anxieties that a lot of contemporary students do,” said Baker.
As students enter their senior year, it is important to take the right advice from the right people to be able to fully enjoy the end of high school. After high school, life will be sudden and unknown, but knowing what is to come is most helpful.
“The oral surgeon who took out my wisdom teeth knew that I was about to graduate high school and he said, ‘be careful when you see a light at the end of the tunnel because sometimes that light is a train’. That’s not very positive advice, but it’s very real advice. That’s
always stuck with me throughout life, so I don’t know that I would give that advice to seniors, but I would definitely say that they should enjoy the time while you have it and just be prepared that life does hit you like a like a train once you’re out,” said Jackson.
Overall, seniors and freshmen at FC have many future and present events to look
forward to. Teachers are able to inform these students on how they were able to tackle
these years while also enjoying them.
“I loved my high school experience here at Floyd Central, and it is a major reason I wanted to return as a teacher and coach,” said Sisson. “While it was a great experience,
it is not a part of life I would ever want to relive or go back to. High school is fun, but it is a time where you are really trying to find your way. It helps start to shape you, but as you leave high school you grow so much as a person. “