Dual-Immersion Student
By Emilee Mae Struss
Wood River High School senior Audra Mary is a 12-year dual-immersion student, a basketball and soccer player, and Model U.N. club participant and an active Every Teen has a Choice (ETC) intern for The Advocates. She is also a member of National Honor Society and carries a 4.25 GPA.
Mary entered the dual-immersion program after her brother, Brock. Starting in elementary school, half a student’s classes are taught in English and the other half in Spanish.
“I really took to Spanish,” Mary said. “I really love the language.”
Mary is now fluent and was able to use her skills while she and her family lived in Argentina for a year. She also spent three weeks in Spain with a host family.
Mary will graduate this year having navigated 11 A.P courses while playing on varsity teams for basketball and soccer.
Her freshman year on basketball she described as a “rebuilding year” for the team, because the starting varsity players were very young. She came at soccer with a lot more background, having started playing when she was 5 with the Idaho Storm soccer club, an Idaho Youth Soccer Association affiliated program.
“Soccer has been a huge part of my life since I was little,” Mary said. “And it was a rough senior night for me at the end because we lost in the qualifying game [for State].”
This year, Mary is enrolled in a Certified Nursing Assistant course, which prepares students for premedical undergraduate courses and gives them an introduction to clinical hours so students graduate high school with some experience to carry them forward.
“Our school does a fantastic job of offering a wide variety of challenging courses,” Mary said. “And I don’t know if I will go into the medical field, but I’m just seeing if it’s something of interest for me.”
She is also enrolled in A.P. Government, A.P Physics, college English, A.P Statistics, and A.P. Environmental Science.
“I’ve taken honor classes since middle school,” Mary said. “And they [Blaine County School District] did a really good job with that transition into high school for A.P. courses.”
Mary said that taking honor and advanced placement courses, as well as playing multiple sports, has taught her the importance of scheduling and prioritizing. She spends a lot of bus rides to and from away games studying for tests and chipping away at homework.
She also has found a niche of interest in the Model U.N. club. Mary has represented women’s rights in Pakistan and met with other students to have diplomatic disputes and resolve issues.
“I like it because it’s less of a debate,” Mary said, “and more of a resolution.”
The Model U.N. club travels to conferences in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Berkeley, Calif.
And, with any time she has left over, Mary volunteers with St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Sun Valley with the kids’ ministry, and educating youth as an ETC intern with The Advocates. ETC interns speak to other youth about healthy relationships and consent.
Mary was proud to share that all four upper-level schools in the Wood River Valley are represented in The Advocates’ ETC intern program, including Wood River High School, Sun Valley Community School, The Sage School and Silver Creek High School.
Mary called her brother her biggest mentor. Brock Mary now attends Boston College, one of the colleges that she has also applied to. Mary isn’t sure of her concentration yet for studies but is leaning toward global health, sociology or nursing.