Child Wonder: City of Stars

Karime Carrillo

Summer is near! Or if you’re reading this Summer is happening? Or Winter? or Spring? Autumn? or the apocalypse finally occurred? Well, whichever time you’re reading this, I would like to talk a little bit more about my High School. School overalls purpose is to educate the uneducated, teach the untaught, and have fun and make friends! School has not been kind to me K-8th grade, but when high school occurred. So many things gave me a reason to smile daily, like my classes. Classes can make me have a wide range of emotions (like being dragged out by cops; last post). However there are two classes that have brighten my day.

Freshman year is probably the toughest year of High School, socially speaking of course. Junior and Senior year are stressful but Freshman year, everything is terrifying. My Freshman year was already off to a bad start when I asked a senior for directions to Mr. Sinn class. He started to laugh while guiding me to the room, and when he showed me to the classroom he gave me my schedule then said good luck as he left laughing. Mr. Sinn’s class was not fun, but that’s not the class I wanted to discuss right now. I have been enrolled in Dance class since Freshman year and I had no experience with dance at all, and now I’m enrolling to Advance dance! I took two full years of dance until I heard my teacher Ms. Jones was leaving for a year and was being replaced by a woman named Brenda Palaby. After taking a break from dance for a semester I asked my fellow dance friends their opinion on the teacher and everyone said she was amazing and possibly better than my old teacher. I was shocked because Ms.Jones is favored among every dance class and still is. When I did dance for spring semester of 2019, I was shy to interact with Ms. Palaby and it felt like I had shoes to fill as a dancer and she has become an amazing teacher and a fun open-minded instructor, but can be very scary when concerts are near. Ms. Jones is coming back and I’m excited, however sad that Palaby will no longer be my teacher.

Jason Chan, also known as Mr. Chan, big baller Chan, and Lowell’s Choir teacher. It was sophomore year were my mother dragged me to my counseling office and told my counselor I had two blocks off for lunch (two lunches was the limit and Seniors could have three blocks off if they chose to). My mom wanted me to fill in the extra slot because she kept persisting that I needed to and I was not happy, I wanted two off blocks so I can eat twice during the day. My counselor read off the list of classes and Choir appeared and they both persuaded me to enroll in the class. Two years later, Choir class has opened up so many opportunities for me to express my passion for singing, I also had the pleasure to meet new people and make friends who have supported me till this very day. I am very grateful because Choir was also how I managed to find out about sunset media wave.

Both of these classes share a special moment with me. In choir class, I was sitting with my friends and I was talking with two friends (Rudy and Cheryl) and was telling them that I love to sing but sing terribly. They both argued with me about my voice and Rudy and I kept arguing back and fourth who truly was a terrible singer, him or me. Then Mr. Chan walked in the classroom, it was the moment we would get a new song. Chan chose the semester theme to be musicals, so he brings out a stack of music sheets that all say City of Stars, a movie I really wanted to watch. When Chan played the song in class I fell in love with it. Fast forward a couple of weeks we are practicing and my friends Cheryl, Rudy, and I were together and we sang while goofing around. My part came up where I had to sing a high note and I took a deep breath and looked at Rudy. He looked back at me and nodded as I sang my part and it felt like I was floating on a cloud. Then class was over, after class Rudy waited for me and then said I told you, you could sing. In Dance class, spring semester of my sophomore year, it was getting near the end of the year. My teacher Ms.Jones had took up the constant request of student teachers, so I signed up my friend Naomi and I to teach. We came up with a choreography to the song City of Stars and it was a partner piece. We had two days to teach it, we were both so nervous. The day came and we were prepared and so excited and nervous more than anything. When we showed the class our dance, it brightened my day because everyone was so excited that they already had decided their dance partner to learn it with. My classmate still mention the dance to me till this day and it makes me so happy that they loved it so much they remembered. Well that’s it for now, till’ nest time lost youth. Don’t be a stranger in a crowd in a city full of stars.