👋 Meet 🤝

Meet Riley Vandale

By Tianna Van Oort

Riley was born in Chilliwack hospital on December 22nd, 2009, she has lived in Agassiz her whole life, Riley is 13 years old and is 5 feet 2 inches tall, genetics are just not working out for her. Riley has blue eyes and blonde hair.

Riley's favourite brands are Nike for shoes and Carhartt for hoodies. She also enjoys sushi tacos from Earls and chicken strips from Sossy’s Saloon “because they’re crispy”. Her favourite colours are purple and forest green because they look good when she wears them. Riley's favourite place to visit is Tofino in the spring because it is not as busy as summer. Riley's favourite sports are volleyball and soccer. She also has a fear of clowns, because she had a nightmare of one chasing her in the dark. On a sunny day Riley likes to play with her dog and go quadding at the river. Now you know about Riley let us talk about her home life. Riley has a dog named Charlie and a cat named Hixie. Riley is the oldest of three, she has two younger sisters Lia and Hayla. In the future Riley wants to make bank and buy a big house, a truck, ATVs, two dogs on a nice property. Overall, Riley is a great person to be around because of her smiley and positive energy.

Meet Addison Sawatzky

By Isabel Wynker

Addi Sawatzky is a 14-year-old beauty queen and knows everything in the entire world so if you need some advice or need to know something just ask Addi! Since she is the queen of the world her favourite colour is pink of course. She was born in the royal fluffy pink bed at the royal Chilliwack hospital. When she was born, she was not like a normal person, she could not walk or talk, her parents were extremely disappointed and decided to have her shipped off to a new home in a small town called Pinky winky dinky Agassiz. To this day Addi has grown to love her new parents so dearly, Mr. Pinky swinky Sawatzky, and Mrs. Pinky swinky Sawatzky. With Addi being so incredibly beautiful she is not able to look in the mirror without starring at herself for 24 hours straight. When Addi was little, she had a pet cat named Sir Maxwell the 56th, at night little Addi would dress her cat up and put eyelash extensions as well as lipstick and blush on her poor cat. This made her cat very mad and so in revenge he started to walk on his hindlegs and sit up right on a rocking chair and knit a pink sweater for Addi. Addi was not surprised by this action because she works at a cat farm where cats make toys and fancy pancy things like that all the time, and the cats who don't know how to do so get sent away to fluffy doffy land where they eat kibble all day just as an appetizer then for their final meal they have tuna sandwiches.

Addi has only been on a airplane one time, well just enough times to get her to Hawaii and back. In Hawaii Addi had a crazy trip. It was so crazy that when she went for a hike, she reached the tipity top of the mountain where there was a waterfall, but then something terrible happened. A mongoose came out of the bushes and pushed her into the waterfall, and Addi went tumbling down and belly flopped into the water at the bottom. Mr Swinky Sawatzky was not happy at all, so he pushed the mongoose into the water but the mongoose caught a hold of Mr. Swinky Sawatzky's hand and pulled him into the water with him. As soon as the mongoose and Mr. Swinky Sawatzky sunk to the bottom, the mongoose brutally attacked him, becoming enraged and slapping everything around him like Mr. Swinky Sawatzky's face and Addi's face, leaving red paw marks.

That was Addis first time out of Canada except the one time she went to the zoo in Seattle when she was 4, she had a blast at the zoo except for when one of the monkeys got out of its cage and took her dads banana from him and ate it. Addi got so mad at the monkey that she went into the monkey's cage and took the monkeys baby from the monkey that took Addi’s dad’s banana from him, then the mama monkey dropped the banana she stole and jumped at Addi and started to pull her hair that’s when one of the people that work there came and took the mama monkey and put her back in her cage, the worker also took the baby monkey back from Addi, the worker kicked Addi and her dad out of the zoo and told them to never come back again.

Overall, Addi is flat out crazy sauce, my best friend in the entire world, I am very amazed by the things she does and when I am spending time together with her there is always lots of fun and giggles. She is also extremely sweet and loves cats.

Meet Brooke Anderson

By Colin Twigg

Brooke was born in Chilliwack on April 11, 2009, and lived in Agassiz her whole life. She likes New York and wants to live there, “I like New York because it’s a city and there's lots of things to do.” Brooke started playing basketball in grade 3 and she still plays it, in fact her favourite subject is PE, just because there is basketball!

Brooke likes to go to her cabin in the summer and her favourite restaurant is near her cabin, it is called Iron Horse. She likes their steaks and ribs. Brooke has 2 pets: a cat and a dog she likes her dog more, his name is Bruce, he is a yellow lab mixed with German Shepard and he is a rescue. She also has 2 siblings: 1 younger and 1 older her favourite colour is green and purple. Brooke likes traveling, she went to Australia Mexico, Fiji, New Zealand, California and New York. Australia and New York are her favourites. “In Australia a huge spider crawled on me when I was asleep.”

Meet Mrs. Fitz!

By Brooke Anderson

Mrs. Fitz is known as AESS’s main PE and mountain school teacher. She has worked for AESS since 1994, 28 years (almost 29). What made her want to be a teacher was a friend back in college, in 1988. Her friend encouraged her to join fitness and conditioning. Fitness and conditioning are courses people/students can join to learn about how the body moves and functions to stay safe, follow proper training guidelines, and make healthy choices that can help them reach their health and fitness goals. This is where Mrs. Fitz started to run more often. She went to college not knowing what she wanted to be, but after taking fitness and conditioning she realized she wanted to be a P.E teacher.

Mrs. Fitz has always been and always will be a sporty person. Her favourite sports to watch are hockey in the winter and softball and baseball in the spring. She also enjoys watching jiujitsu, and as a young adult she liked rugby. She grew to like hockey, softball, baseball and jiujitsu because her kids are in it. She claims her children are her idols, and says this because she loves to watch them succeed in things they do, she says it makes her proud, which brings me to my next point; why she likes this job, she says she loves spending her day with nice, funny, and hardworking kids. She loves watching her students succeed because it’s a sign that’s she has done her job well.

She says her mom has always pushed and motivated her to do an excellent job. She has also just never liked to be lazy. Her mom always said, “finish the job and do it to the best of your ability” which is great advice. Her advice to everyone is to never give up, you can achieve anything if you do not give up.

Meet Tianna Van Oort

By Ava Callaghan

Tianna Van Oort, or as I call her Tianna Vanshort, was born on Valentine's Day in Chilliwack but grew up in Harrison, and is always bragging about how Harrison is better than Agassiz, but she is wrong, Agassiz is better.

Another thing she talks about a lot is SZA, and when I say she talks about it a lot I mean she doesn’t shut up about it. SZA is her favourite and everyone knows it. She also loves perogies and margarita pizza. Her favourite drink is pink lemonade, and her favourite colours are brown and green. Weird choices but okay.

In Tianna's free time she likes being outdoors and being with her friends. She also has 3 siblings who she likes being with.

Tianna is so much fun to be around and has the best energy! She is also very nice and super funny. “Talk about how funny I am in the review".

Meet Mr. Peary

By Jude Greenizan

Mr. Peary is a teacher and head of the special education department at AESS. His favourite part about working here is working with staff and all the kids - watching them grow up and move on to be great people. The reason Mr. Peary started working here is because of his dad. His dad was a principle and he loved coaching sports teams, he thought that would be the same as teaching and it was. He also loves the socialization part and working with people, helping them become better people. Mr. Peary shared some life pro tips; never let any one judge you, try to make as many good choices as possible and always challenge yourself.

Mr. Peary has worked in many places; he worked in Misson, as a principal for 15 years, and then worked in Abbotsford 15 years, as principal. He also worked in Egypt for one year! Mr. Peary’s idol is Terry Fox, he admires him because he never let any one stop him from doing what he wanted to do. Mr. Peary is a great teacher at our school, and this is his 30th year teaching. Mr Peary went to school for 6 years, it took an extra year because he got kicked out of UBC for failing too many courses so he went to college and then went back to UBC to finish his courses, he then taught for a year and then went back to UBC to get his master's degree.

Meet: Mr. Karr

By Corey Charlie, Koen Noddin, and Brodie Smart.

Mr. Karr is an all-grades technology and auto teacher at AESS. This is going to be his 8th year as a tech teacher here. Mr. Karr did his practice in Sardis and some teaching in Monterey Mexico. Mr. Karr has not always wanted to be a teacher, before he decided he wanted to teach, he wanted to be a heavy-duty mechanic. Time went on, he realized as he got older, he "doesn’t want to be sitting in a puddle of oil in the cold," Instead, he decided he, "wanted to teach young kids and adults their way around mechanical work and working with metal". According to Mr. Karr his favourite part about teaching tech is, “..Those moments when a student says, I can't do this, then DOES, and realizes it wasn’t hard at all”.

Overall Mr. Karr enjoys his job and wishes to keep going

Meet Ms. Swinford

By Corey Charlie and Koen Noddin

Ms. Swinford has been a vice principal since March,2022. When she began as a vice principal, she started to miss teaching later she started teaching senior English and now she Is happy because she can be in the office and teach a class. She first became a vice principal because she was looking for a change. She is on her 19th year of teaching at AESS, but before teaching here she worked at Kamloops and Williams Lake. When she was working there, she did not have her own classroom she was a TOC. But she did not always work at a school, before she started teaching, she worked at a produce farm, few retail stores, and her first job was a cleaner. If she were not a teacher, she would want to do something with animals. Her favourite part about being a teacher that no day is the same. She thinks it is fun to work with kids, and she thinks she makes good relationships with her staff members. When she was a teacher, she taught Junior to Senior English, a little bit of PE. If she could teach any other class, she said it would be social studies and outdoor ed.

Page updated

Report abuse