Discovery Staff Spotlight

Get to know the amazing staff at this school

By: Avery Perry

Asstudents,weareblessedtohavesuchamazing teachers and staff at Discovery High School (DHS). Of course it’s important to know and appreciatetheteacherswhohelpkeepourschool afloat,buthowwelldowereallyknowthem?

Thisweek,thespotlightisonastaffmemberyou see every morning as you walk through Discovery’s doors—someone who knows every student by name. Melissa McGuffin has done so muchforthebehindthescenesofourschool.So, itisimportanttoreallylearnaboutwho'sbehind thedeskeveryday.

McGuffin has been working in education for years.ShewastheoriginalsecretaryatDiscovery HighSchoolandhasremainedthereeversince.

product wasn’t something to be proud of, Perger’s exhibition left them with a feeling akin topositivesurprise.Theyreportedbeingsatisfied with how they presented their negatively-perceivedproject.

During the three-day weekend after Intersession concluded, student emotions were high and diverse. When each statement was boiled down to binary values for statistical collection, feelings after JanTerm’s conclusion had the highest amount of variation in response. From nine interviews,sixdifferenttypesofemotionshowed prevalence in student experiences. The most common and universal feeling was relief, with seven responses using that specific word as a description.

The second most common feeling during the post-Intersession weekend, exhaustion, was reported by four different students, Theodore Sampey, Jax Goertzen, Thinh Ngo and Rory Perger. Each student reported a different level of satisfaction with their final product, with different project types being used for each. This led Digest to conclude that no matter the perceived product quality, many students put in enough effort to feel exhausted after Intersession’sconclusion.

It appears that beyond workload, students and project administrators were on the same emotional levels for a variety of things; Sampey and Lorch both described themselves as overwhelmed during the three days after Intersession.Meanwhile,Linthwaite’sexhaustion seemed in line with, if not worse than, many students. She fell ill toward the end of Intersession,likelyduetostress,andcanceledher weekendplanstorest.

Although their product was not up to their standardsandtheyreporteddisdainforreturning to their normal classes, Perger still mentioned feeling relief the weekend after Intersession’s conclusion.

The similarities between student and teacher emotions point toward a bigger picture within DHS’ campus. “Friendship and community was a bigpartofJanTerm,”DHSstudentWillowFazio said in an interview with Digest. “I couldn’t have done it without my friends, the students, and the staff. The teachers were, like, the biggest part of it.“

Theodore Sampey, Thinh Ngo, Jax Goertzen, Silvia Pujol, Perger, Zachariah Tricola, Jack Harding, Willow Fazio and Logan Bevers were thestudentsinterviewedforthisarticle.