🗞️Staff Stories🗞️

Here at the Navigator, we work to create enjoyable publications full of a wide variety of articles, from the informative to the humorous. But, we are still students, so we have other classes we must work on as well. Let us get a glimpse of the school lives of the Navigator staff by investigating their favorite high school courses, which are as diverse as toppings on a pizza.

I know what you did on December 31, well, not exactly, but a rough idea. You probably toasted a chilled glass of something sparkling, and resolved to some sort of ritual that would lead to a better you in 2024. Well, you aren’t alone. Millions of people around the world participate in this tradition, either scribbling resolutions down on a crumpled napkin, or in an embellished notebook they purchased for the occasion. Well, the Navigator staff also participated in this ritual, and shared some of the resolutions they made for 2024. 

From 2018-2020, the editor-in-chief at the Navigator was Savannah L. Not only was Savannah the editor-in-chief, but also one of the founders of the Navigator class at NorthStar. Since graduating, Savannah now attends Mount St. Mary’s college in Maryland. It has been four years since Savannah left NorthStar, and now is as good a time as any to catch up.

Christmas is nearly upon us. This year, let us take a look at what the members of the Navigator team are planning to do to celebrate the holiday!

The Navigator ended in June, and all the writers went their separate ways. Sometimes it's easy to forget that people we know from NSA have lives outside of school. In this article, let’s check on what the Nav writers were doing this offseason.

This is my third year on the Navigator. As such, I have already written two articles about my experience at NorthStar and on the Navigator. For my 9th grade year, my first year on the Nav, I wrote about how NorthStar gives me the flexibility I need in my life, while still providing a rigid-enough structure to compensate for my busy brain. In my second story article, I wrote about how NorthStar has given me the community that I had always wanted. Since I’ve already talked about NSA’s social, spiritual, and academic aspects, I want to make sure that this article covers something different. 

Once upon a blustery November morning seven years ago, a barely 11-year-old sixth grader walked into the math classroom at her local Christian school. She had been attending this school since kindergarten and had never known anything different as far as school goes. School, at the time, meant navigating a (comparatively) small, combined middle and high school campus on the middle school side of the building, worrying about being late to class, trying to make straight A’s to avoid parents’ displeasure, and juggling changing friendships. One word can connotate a lot, right?

I have existed on this planet for fifteen years now. And though it’s been a year since I wrote my first staff story, I must admit I still don’t like doing it. What is there to say now? I don’t know, and that’s why I’m writing this extremely close to the due date. 

My NSA story has not been a fairytale, far from it to be honest, but I have enjoyed my time at NorthStar. This is my third year at NSA, but only my second year taking classes only from NorthStar. The three-year journey until now has been full of hardships, but there are many fun memories. My tenth grade year in particular has been full of changes, yet there has been a constant, the Navigator.

You can describe me with the 4 F’s and two P’s. Faith, Family, Flag, Freedom, Protection, and Procrastination. I know, it's an underwhelming end to such a virtuous list. You may know me as the funny guy in that obscure school newspaper. You may be saying “that man is cringe” or something similar. You might even know me as the guy who was active on Teams a year ago then disappeared forever. In the case of the latter, I don’t know why you still remember me, my greatest contribution to NSA was participating in a meme war. But whether I’m remembered as King Cringe or the Chick-fil-A guy, I am leaving…for good, I’m never coming back.

For most, the Covid-19 pandemic has been nothing but trouble. The deadly disease has wreaked havoc all over the world. I, however, have gotten something positive out of the pandemic: if it hadn't been for the lockdowns, I may never have found NSA.

This is an allegorical story of growing up, moving from childhood to adulthood, and being a senior. The piece is inspired by John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim Progress.” This is part of my NSA Story. 

Over the years, my school life/situation has encountered many changes. Maybe my school situation had to change more than the average person’s, but maybe not. Whatever it is, I think it’s been great that my life has changed so much and given me some odd experiences. 

This year has been my first year writing for the Navigator. I’ll be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect before I decided to join. Since I didn’t know exactly what to expect, I decided not to join last year, and now I regret not joining sooner. My goal with this article is to make sure others who are hesitant to join don’t make the same mistake I did. In this article, I will tell the story of how I decided to join the Navigator, and what my experience has been like. I will also provide information about how you can experience a Navigator live session in person.

Well, I guess I made it. We are coming very close to the end of the school year, and to the end of a very significant stage of my life. With the chaos of life and schoolwork, I’m not sure if I’ve actually taken a moment to really take a breath and consider that fact. High school has been a wild ride. Was it at all like High School Musical? No, but that’s probably for the best.

As a teacher, I should be excited as we come to the beginning of June–cheering for the seniors who have completed their high school journey. But this year, that celebration is mixed with a bit of reserve.

I’m not gonna lie. It took me a while to get started on this article. Usually, when it’s time to start working on our new publication, I excitedly start looking for people to interview or documents to read. But for this article, I had no one to interview, nor any reason to lurk around Teams for Word docs. I had to write about myself.

My journey, or might I say, voyage, has been a highlight of my time at NSA. The NSS Navigator has been a good ship, seaworthy, and hasn’t let me down. It can support its weight, it leaks at times, cracks form, but if you keep a cool head, it's nothing you can’t overcome. Thankfully, my fellow crewmates are the best in the business. We set out from Port North with a goal, to deliver news to the four corners of NorthStar, and I think we’ve done that. However, the voyage is nearly at its end.

All year long, students get to read the fabulous articles that the Navigator Staff writes every publication. However, rarely do you get to see the real people behind the black-colored pixel letters on your screen. This has been especially true for me. As the Editor-in-Chief for the Navigator, my main job is to publish the articles and update the website. As a result, you don’t get to see me pop up here very often. However, for this article, I want to explain how much NorthStar means to me.

High school has been the best years of my life. Don’t get me wrong, it’s also been the most stressful years of my life, but the best years, nonetheless. As my high school journey comes to a close and I get ready to finish the last chapter of my NSA story, which I’ve creatively titled Senior Year, I’ve felt so thankful. Has NSA made me want to scream and cry and rip my hair out from time to time? Yes. Have I cried consistently during every math class I’ve taken here? Also, yes. But I wouldn’t be who I am today if it had not been for NSA.

Born and raised in South Africa and homeschooling since the age of five, I’ve had an interesting journey to arriving at the virtual school gates of NorthStar Academy. As mentioned, I’ve been homeschooled since the age of five, which means that my mother has not only taught me how to write and read, but to really fall in love with learning and escape to the magical world of books.

My name is Ian King, and I am one of the writers behind many of the articles that you have seen on the Navigator website. I am a graduating senior and will be leaving NorthStar Academy for Liberty University. My experience with NSA has been one that is all too common among high school students: a busy yet productive life perpetuated with academic responsibilities and the strenuous adjustment to each year’s new needs. However, I don’t want to lament the demanding years that defined my high school experience; rather, I want to be thankful for the challenges that necessitated the person I became through it.

The NorthStar Navigator is only the newspaper it is today because of Mrs. Meyer - our hilarious, generous, huge-hearted teacher advisor! As a staff, we want to make sure she knows how loved she is, and that you all know how hard she works! So without further ado, here is why we love Mrs. Meyer!

There are many moving parts that work together to make a machine work. Each part has a different job. And just like a machine, we are not all reporters. There are three positions that are unlike any other: Teacher-Advisor, Editor, and Editor-in-Chief.

The staff of the NorthStar Navigator write articles on other students, teachers, events, and clubs around NSA all year long. Naturally, as readers, none of you get to really know them through what they write. To help solve that problem, I’m here to divulge the New Year’s resolutions of the Navigator staff.

Everyone has a story, and Mrs. Kathrine Clark’s is quite unique. Though she is now a middle school and high school history teacher, she was once a student at NorthStar Academy! As a child, Mrs. Clark lived as a missionary kid with her parents in Chad, Africa. She went to NorthStar Academy for her junior and senior year and graduated in 2013. When she attended, the school was quite different than it was today. Students downloaded their lessons in PDF format and worked offline. When they were done, they emailed their work to their teacher and the teacher graded it. However in the later part of Mrs. Clark’s time at NSA, lessons were switched over to an LMS system called Brainhoney, a precursor to Buzz.

The impact that teachers can have on their students' lives is sometimes overlooked. Our teachers are the people who support us in our growth and learning, and a teacher that cares is memorable. Of course, here at NSA, we are lucky to have remarkable teachers like Mrs. Arnaud. In addition to working at NSA, Mrs. Arnaud works for the Florida Department of Corrections as a special education teacher at a prison.

The 2020-21 school year was full of uncertainty and adventure for many brick-and-mortar students around the globe. With so much still going on in the world, teachers, students, and staff alike found themselves still learning how to adjust to an online learning environment. Here at NorthStar Academy, students continued to relish in their own personal academic successes. This success is largely due to the teachers -- whose patience and dedication inspires their students, no matter the situation. One of these teachers is the Navigator’s own faculty advisor: Mrs. April Meyer.

I wanted to share myself with NSA. My real self. Not the “ahhhhh xd xd bahahhah” texting Izzy. I wanted to share the actual face behind those quirky, cute messages. The broken, sometimes sad, thoughtful Izzy that loves her dog like crazy and is really passionate about life. I loved writing. I love making blogs. Everything seemed simple. I started a Blogspot blog and began writing. I made an introduction and shared that introduction with the Student Body.

This article is not going to be strictly about how I came to NorthStar Academy, mainly because the reason I’m here doesn’t make for a very exciting article. So let us put it briefly:

My dad was looking for an accredited way to homeschool so that my sister could go to the Naval Academy. While searching for schools, he saw that a NorthStar graduate had gone on to the Naval Academy. He looked into NSA, liked it, and signed my sister up. Pretty soon I followed with a couple of courses and then my younger sister got some courses, and soon we were near full-time students.