Voices

Two years ago, Shelby Morgan completed a cardiopulmonary resuscitation course that was required by her health class at school. A few days later, she went to visit her grandfather. While visiting him, her grandfather experienced a heart attack. Morgan stayed calm and used the skills she learned from the CPR class to help him.

They’re called flowering or blooming teas. Delicate flowers and leaves carefully tied together and designed to open into an artful display, or bloom, in a cup of water.

Thirteen years ago a family of 15 moved from Russia to Spokane. The third youngest in that family, Angelina Chebotareva, went on to leave a lasting impact at Spokane Valley High School.

When Emily Tender was 14, her mother took what Tender described as some photos in “dorky” poses of her and submitted them to a modeling agency in Seattle. That agency signed her – as did Nous Model Management in Los Angeles in 2015 and the super big IMG Models in New York.

The school’s valedictorian is deeply involved in nearly every aspect of St. Michael’s, from school plays and choir to carpentry. He is also a member of the National Honor Society, and devotes much of his time to volunteer work within the school and surrounding community.

She’s 17. She’s writing a novel. And she does rodeos.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Mariah Miller couldn’t picture herself graduating from high school. Or at least, not from the high school she was attending at the time.

Two weeks spent teaching English to native students in Tanzania inspired Lakeland High senior Cameron Marsh to abandon plans of becoming a neurosurgeon to study global health. He hopes to work as a physician serving underprivileged communities.

A certain stereotype of home-schooled students chalks them up as sheltered, socially inept and limited in their world experiences.

On the surface, Kialynn Palpant is an intellectual with a knack for the arts. She has taken after her father, an English teacher at the Oaks and published author, with her passion for writing poetry and literature. She just completed a historical fiction novel on the French Huguenots in the 1500s, along with several poems.

Jordon Nield had his heart set on the saxophone, but there weren’t any left when he signed up for sixth-grade band. There was one lonely instrument left to choose from, a trombone. So, the trombone it was. “I kind of fell in love with it,” he said.

It took three years for Noah Miller to find the right academic fit, but when he arrived at Medical Lake Alternative High School last fall, he knew he’d found it.

In the midst of four cancer relapses during his high school career, Mitch Carbon came face-to-face with the fact that doctors had done all they could do for him. His acute lymphoblastic leukemia had progressed to his brain, and his doctors were simply buying him time.

Perhaps the greatest lesson Valley Christian senior David Gilmartin learned about service came when he felt like he wasn’t helping anybody.

Natalie Peters isn’t letting the fact that she’s already died twice mute her excitement for adulthood. The light pink scar above the Georgia native’s heart is the sole physical token of a past marred by two medical emergencies; she overcame both in time to graduate from high school.

Most students get middle school jitters, but the transition for Meseret Dokken grew to overwhelming shortly after her arrival from Ethiopia.