MILTON/WOODSTOCK — Telstar Senior Kaitlyn Buck uses her contagious laugh to combat the COVID-19 blues and is encouraging her fellow classmates to do the same.

“We may not have the end of our senior year as we all have hoped, but we need to make the best of it, laugh as much as we can and be happy that we can still be at school where everyone is trying to make it as normal as possible for us,” the 17-year-old said.

Buck, who is known by many in school as the one who’s always laughing, says laughter is one of the ways she has been able to power through what has been a challenging senior year.

“The social interactions this year have been hard, I rarely see my classmates, I see some while walking in the halls, but we aren’t all as close as we have been in the past years,” Buck said.

“I think some of the toughest challenges with COVID going on is that we can’t have a normal senior year, and not knowing when we will be going remote again.  I know it is hard with COVID but our class has felt like they have been overlooked, although many people are trying their best to get through this and still make us feel normal,” she added.

Homecoming and Winter Carnival Weekend are where some of Bucks favorite memories at school were made and not having either occur in traditional form this year was a tough pill to swallow.

She’s been with the SAD 44 district for a total of six years. From Kindergarten to Grade 5 she attended schools in Regional School Unit 10 before starting a new journey at Telstar for middle school. Despite making new friends at Telstar, Buck missed her friends at RSU 10 and after her first year of high school decided to return there for her sophomore year. While being back on her old stomping grounds felt good, Buck said she realized that there were more opportunities for her back at Telstar, so she made the final switch back to SAD 44.

At Telstar, she has taken advantage of the opportunities that drew her back to the school in the first place. She’s involved with student council, serves as Secretary of the National Honor Society and academically has earned both honors and high honors. Her hard work now is setting her up for a promising future. She plans to attend the University of Maine at Farmington to major in Elementary Education and to minor in Special Education.

“In the future I want to be a teacher either for third grade or something to do with special education,” Buck said.

Teaching was not the first option Buck explored, but once she got an idea of what the career could entail, there was no going back.

When Buck was young, her first dream job was being a Marine Biologist. Then it was being a Radiologist. After that it was becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant, which came from watching both her great-grandfather and Nana in the hospital.

“I wanted to help people that need the care, but I ultimately came to the conclusion that I wanted to help kids because there is always a need for teachers and because I love to help others,” Buck said.

One of the biggest inspirations that lead Buck to pursue a teaching career was her younger sister, who is visually impaired. Buck enjoys helping and learning news things alongside her sister, who is currently working on moving with a cane and studying braille, a form of touch reading and writing for visually-impaired people.

Prior to the pandemic, Buck shadowed her sister’s Teacher of the Visually Impaired (TVI), which is another factor that lead to her wanting to teach kids.

“When I sat down and thought about how much I love little kids and my little sister, that is what made me want to be a teacher and minor in special education, that way I have a couple of different options of what I want to do when I am done with college. I want to encourage others to want to learn and inspire others,” Buck said.

As of now, though, Buck’s eyes are set on her final months at Telstar, with hopes of  a somewhat normal graduation and project graduation.

“I plan to wrap up my senior year by having fun and trying to not let COVID bring me down,”

Outside of using her contagious laugh, Buck has been trying to keep positive by staying busy. She enjoys having fires, going on rides with friends, ice fishing, four-wheeling being outdoors and spending time with her  pets. She currently has four dogs, two cats and a bunny.

One of her favorite year-round things to do is eat ice cream in the company of her dogs. Another activity Buck loves is drawing and she took the time to single out one of her favorite teachers at Telstar, Teresa Ingraham, who has spent years teaching art in the district.

“I have had many of her art classes and she has helped me grow and learn that I can do anything I put my mind to,” she said. ” She is there for me to go and talk to and knowing that makes me feel better and want to go to school and have her art classes.”

With the weather getting warmer, Buck will soon have additional ways to keep upbeat in addition to Ingraham’s art classes and, of course, she’ll always have her laugh to fall back on, too.

“I am usually known as one who is always laughing with my contagious laugh.”

 

 

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