Identity in Traverse City

Civics and English teacher, Kathryn Phillips, is new at Central High School this year, but she has been teaching for 15 years. Phillips spent the early years of her life in Chicago, but right before high school, her parents split and she headed up to Traverse City. “Once I got to St. Francis High School, I was very outgoing. I talked a lot and made a ton of friends,” remembers Phillips. “In fact, I’m still friends with them now.” After college, she started working as an account executive in Dallas, Texas. “I had clients and I would write articles for them, try to get them positive media, and get radio stations and news stations to say good things about them,” she explained. “When I worked in public relations, there was a ton of traveling, so when I got married and had kids it was too much. I still stayed with the company, but just did the writing from home.” A few years passed and once her kids entered school, Phillips started volunteering at their school for fun. “After doing the writing from home and volunteering for a while, I realized I wanted to do more. I went back to school to be a teacher, graduated, and the rest is history.” Just this year, Phillips started working at Central High School. “Mr. Perkins [East Middle School principal] called me just a couple of days before school started and told me I was going to be working at CHS. I cried after the phone call because I loved my job at East. The staff, kids and the community was all familiar to me. Nothing at Central was.” The start of the school year was not easy for Phillips. “For the first two weeks when we were online, I was very lonely. No one came in to talk to me because they didn’t know who I was,” she said. Phillips has come a long way in little time. She has learned two new curriculums in just days and has met tons of new staff and students. “Now that all the kids are back I’m happy and getting to know people.” Though she loves meeting new students, she has also loved seeing her former students in the hallways, especially the ones she didn’t get to say goodbye to in the spring. //

Ben Brewer ‘24 can’t remember a time when he wasn’t playing tennis. “I’ve been playing since kindergarten or first grade,” he recalled. The transition from Woodland to CHS has been easier because of his involvement on Central’s tennis team. “I have friends from tennis that I knew from a couple years ago,” he explained. With so much happening at the beginning of this school year, it was good for Brewer to have tennis there. “I can’t say [the transition] has been perfect but it hasn’t been terrible,” he expressed. Brewer enjoyed the experience he got from finally trying competitive tennis. “The tennis season finished a few weeks ago and I was glad and also a bit sad. Coming from a school where the only sport is cross country it was fun to try a sport that I had been playing for a long time, but never played competitively.” Brewer does not only focus on tennis, but he also takes part in other activities. “I like swimming and recently we got a ping pong table so I’ve been playing on that a lot,” he described. “I go on hikes with my family a lot too.” A perfect day for Brewer would be to “do nothing, just hang out at my house with family.” After having a busy tennis season Brewer is ready for a break. //

Assistant principal Ben Berger is a true Trojan. “I grew up in Traverse City and went [to Central High School]. I loved it...I was pretty involved and I had a really good experience. I was in student senate and just really enjoyed the interactions I had here.” Since Berger was a student, not much has changed. “Where the new weight room and gym are there was nothing, so the big gym was just its own island.” Imagine having to walk outside in 30 degree weather everyday just to get to gym class, crazy right? “9th graders are also a new addition, but besides that everything is still the same.” “My experience here is what made me want to have an impact on young people’s lives and get into teaching,” reminisced Berger. However, he did not follow through in becoming a teacher, as he had originally planned. Berger started out at Central High School as a teacher, but eventually decided to pursue being a principal. “I really enjoyed being a teacher, but I was frustrated with some of the things going on outside of the classroom,” Berger explained. “Becoming a principal was a way to widen my sphere and reach more kids and impact the culture of Central.” With Berger’s persistence to improve CHS for the better, he has grown to love the Central community. Berger’s favorite thing about Central is the backstory.“I feel like Central has a deep tradition. Traverse City is such a great town and Central has always been the flagship high school. This building has been here since 1959 and before that, Central was founded in 1855. I love the history, and the tradition, and the fact that once you’re a Trojan, you’re always a Trojan,” he remarked. If you were to ask about Berger’s normal day, there wouldn’t be one answer. “I love being a principal because there is no typical day. For my typical morning, I get in a little early to do some email work and set up for the day, but once kids get in the building you never know what way the day is going to go. It’s unpredictable.” For Berger, the students are his main priority, and one of the most difficult objectives is making everyone feel comfortable. “The outside perception is that we are too big of a school. I think some people get scared away from this.” Berger wishes that students could get an inside look of the school and see that the size of the building is truly deceiving, but once you settle in it seems much smaller. In five to ten years, Berger still wants to be at Central because ultimately, he is here to make an impact on the community and tradition of the school. // traverse city identityin Photos: E. Linck by EVELYN LINCK staff writer

In our spin-off of Humans of New York, the Black & Gold Quarterly went into the Central High School community in search of uniquity. Our mission was to find inspiring stories and share them to encourage self-expression. Through a variety of randomly selected people, we were about to find one commonality: passion. Stories like theirs are what makes us believe in the power that comes from expression through journalism. People are art. We feel combining their words with a visual story, a unique and inspiring message is created. Members of our community have conveyed their identities and inspired us through their words and sense of passion. To us, this is the truest kind of journalism— finding moving stories and sharing them.