~ June Issue ~
 

Ms. Young
By Kai Van Dusen

Ms. Young, or Ms. Dannen as some may still know her, is an extremely nice and very intelligent teacher. She walks through the halls every day and smiles, waves and says “Hello” to everyone regardless of whether they are a student of hers or not. Junior Devon Naccarato, who has never had Ms. Young, expresses grief for her departure, “Ms. Young is one of the nicest teachers here.  She is so caring and so kind it’s unbelievable.  I wish I could have her as a teacher and I am sad to have her leave”. Sadly, Ms. Young is leaving ESHS at the end of this year.

            Her 34 years of teaching have been filled with joyful memories and, of course, the occasional frustrating student, but after 24 years of teaching at ESHS, Ms. Young still expresses her love for this “wonderful school”. Her departure is bittersweet, for although Ms. Young will surely miss her students and colleagues, she leaves for better opportunities at the junior college level.

            Ms. Young has done many things around El Segundo; she has sung in her church choir for 24 years, has been a girl scout leader, started the ESHS robotics team, has been a class advisor all but three years in her time here and has helped out with Prom and Coronation dances, missing only 4 Proms and 3 Coronations. “My summers are full of science” says Ms. Young, who has a masters degree in genetics and science education from Willamette University; she worked as a Space and Rocket camp teacher in 2004, has gone to Colorado 2 times for space camp, has worked as an earthquake engineer at UCLA as well as done research at Cal Tech. In 1988 she was one of two teachers from California to be invited to see the space shuttle launch, which she said was “a big honor” but it conflicted with the school year so she went to see the landing of the shuttle instead. Ms. Young said that she had “a lot of good memories” in El Segundo. Ms. Young remembers her first day at ESHS as “Scary but exciting” she says “Everybody was very friendly.” Ms. Young says that “El Segundo has a super campus and is a friendly and supportive town.” She told stories about how when she first came to the school and started chaperoning the dances like prom and coronation, she was very young and students asked her to dance, or how she was checking dark corners of the prom for kissing students with her husband and was caught by some of the students kissing her husband. She says another one of her favorite memories is more of a funny story. When she taught biology she accidentally watered the class’ plants with a bleached bottle which killed the plants. She ended up turning this setback into a lesson on toxins for her class. With these remembrances gracing her smiling face, Ms. Young continued with memories of her first days at ESHS; she helped with cheerleading and brought her daughters with her; they were the squad’s “little mascots” and were met with surprise at class reunions due to the fact that they had grown over 20 years since the students had seen them.  After this anecdote, Ms. Young remarked that when her father passed away she got a card that had many signatures from people from all over town giving her support to get through the hard times.

            Ms. Young’s goal is “to spark ideas and leave kids thinking about things.” She says that she will miss “the friendliness of the teachers” as well as her “bright, interesting and surprising students.” She did remark that she would not miss the “disrespectful students who threw pennies and paper airplanes in class”

            When asked about the departing seniors Ms. Young remarked, “Every year I miss the seniors who leave.” Her advice to the seniors is that they should “keep learning, know that part of learning is getting through the hard parts to get to the fabulous parts” and to not “forget all of us at El Segundo.”