A Staff Full of Panthers
Written by Karl Houtman, Former Student on Monday, November 16, 2015
Snohomish High School was established in 1894 and has been the stomping ground for many students since its opening. Over the course of 121 years, thousands of students each year have come to SHS to learn about what they will do with the rest of their lives. It is not out of the ordinary for some of these inspired students to want to return to SHS and build a legacy as a staff member of the school they have their diploma from.
Several staff members have graduated from SHS, and are now in classrooms of their own where they had once learned themselves. Some staff here have been around so long that they were teachers of teachers.
Mark Perry, the athletic director at SHS, Anne Tompkins, the assistnat principal, and the late Tuck Gionet, the goverment teacher who died of cancer over the summer have all been teaching in Snohomish for over 33 years.
Melissa Metzger, a graduate from 1997, teaches several English classes at SHS. She is also the advisor for the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). She has proclaimed that she is the "meanest teacher of the land and the sea," when in fact she began her freshman year (on the old freshman campus) as very quiet and reserved.
While other students were partying and celebrating their high school years, Metzger was competing as a competitive figure skater.
"I was training. I wasn’t a very average student, says Metzger.
Nick Hammons left SHS to play college baseball in 2007 but instead deciding to pursue a career in criminal justice. He is now head of campus security at his old high school.
“A friend talked me into majoring in criminal justice,” Hammons said.
Hammon graduated with such alumni as Kayla Gannon, the alumni homecoming queen for 2015, as well as Houston Kraft, a famous public speaker.
Whitney Johnson, a part-time health teacher, recently graduated from SHS in 2011. She is the most recent graduate to be teaching at the high school.
Other SHS alumni include: Jay Adams, an art teacher and advisor for the photography club; Lindsay Barstad, a physical education teacher and advisor for the sophomore senators; Joel Boyer, a physical education teacher and coach; Courtney Brown, an assistant for the science department.
Along with them are Stacey Lischke, an advisor for FFA and science teacher; Dave Martina, a math teacher; Heidi Pike, a U.S. History and world history teacher who graduated in 1992; Ken Roberts, a physical education teacher and coach; Joyce Yates, an English and math teacher, and Frank Lopez, a paraeducator who graduated in 1975.
Jeff Armstrong, a physical education teacher and football coach, is the oldest graduate to be teaching here, having graduated in 1972. His father, Dick Armstrong, was a coach as well and is memorialized in a statue next to the stadium.
These staff members, along with several others, have brought about change in the lives of students just as they were encouraged back when they were students. It is with this that these staff members can relate students, and give them hope in the fact that they can have a future that does not stretch far from their roots.
