Hayes’ Mungovan sees future in education

Hayes High School’s Audrey Mungovan

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Hayes High School senior Audrey Mungo­van knows for cer­tain that she will major in edu­ca­tion. What she isn’t sure about is if it will be ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion, music edu­ca­tion or as an envi­ron­men­tal teacher.

“We always played school when we were lit­tle and I always wanted to be the teacher,” Audrey said. “I love the lit­tle kids.”

Hav­ing shad­owed both at the ele­men­tary and mid­dle school lev­els, she learned she prefers the younger students.

“It made me real­ize, I really like the lit­tle kids,” she said. While lean­ing toward ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion, she has not ruled out envi­ron­men­tal teach­ing, which would allow her to work for a parks sys­tem. Audrey noted that while edu­ca­tion is not a high-paying field, it is one that would bring her the most satisfaction.

“No mat­ter what the price, I want to be a teacher,” she said.

Audrey is con­sid­er­ing Miami Uni­ver­sity, Otter­bein Uni­ver­sity and Den­ni­son University.

I like Miami,” she said, adding that her par­ents are a “Miami merger,” having met at the school. Her older sis­ter is attend­ing Miami now and her uncle attended there as well.

Audrey will learn in early Feb­ru­ary if she is accepted into the aca­d­e­mic pro­gram at Miami. She also needs to audi­tion before being con­sid­ered for the music program.

“I want to keep singing, play­ing,” Audrey said. She has played the viola in the school’s strings pro­gram since fourth grade.

“My dream is to go to Ire­land. I want to learn to play the fid­dle. I love Irish music,” she said.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing in Hayes Play­ers, Audrey per­forms on the viola with the group play­ing clas­si­cal and pop. She also per­forms with Hayes Singers and with the sym­phonic choir.

Hayes Play­ers per­forms at a lot of hol­i­day par­ties, she said, along with other venues.

“The one thing I will miss the most will be play­ing in a quar­tet,” she said.

Stacy Lemke, orches­tra direc­tor at Hayes, said, “Audrey has been an out­stand­ing vio­list since she started play­ing in fourth grade strings. She played with per­fect pos­ture and posi­tions from the begin­ning which is some­thing you rarely see. Audrey also per­formed with great musi­cal expres­sive­ness from an early age as well. She has a great atti­tude and has gen­er­ously given her time by per­form­ing at numer­ous com­mu­nity events as vio­list in the Hayes String Quar­tet and as a mem­ber of Hayes Singers. It’s very reward­ing to have such a tal­ented and ded­i­cated stu­dent in our music department.”

Audrey also played var­sity ten­nis all four years in high school. She was the team’s co-captain and won MVP this year. She set a school record for the most wins ever for a girl, with 44 wins.

“It’s a sport I can have all my life. The coaches want you to improve and have fun. It’s a fun place to be,” she said.

Audrey is cur­rently Key Club co-president, which allows her to do com­mu­nity ser­vice through the Kiwa­nis. Her work with the club includes raf­fling off bas­kets to stu­dents to raise money for pre­na­tal tetanus and mak­ing sleep­ing bags for the homeless.

She is also involved in thes­pi­ans. She has been in school plays in pre­vi­ous years and plans to try out for a musi­cal this year. Audrey said she would like to be more involved in the music honor soci­ety, but it meets the same time as Key Club.

Audrey is also a mem­ber of National Honor Soci­ety, par­tic­i­pates in Make a Dif­fer­ence Day and babysits in her spare time.

As part of a class project, Audrey held two art camps for neigh­bor­hood chil­dren aged 4 to 10 to raise money for the Arts Cas­tle. The young­sters got to see the end result of their work when they raised $100 for the Arts Cas­tle; they also made a col­lage wreath of their hands which was pre­sented to the Arts Castle.

“The Arts Cas­tle was a big part of my life when I was young, so it was nice to give back,” Audrey said.

Audrey also vol­un­teers at var­i­ous schools through­out the dis­trict, shad­ow­ing at both Smith Ele­men­tary and Willis Inter­me­di­ate School while also vol­un­teer­ing at Preser­va­tion Parks and Strat­ford Eco­log­i­cal Center.

“So for me, it’s like teacher acad­emy. I think what I’m doing is good, and I have more free­dom to do it,” she said.

Jen­nifer Chiles, is a first grade teacher with Delaware City Schools.

She said, “Audrey Mungo­van is a hard work­ing young lady. She comes into the class­room to vol­un­teer her time and is always ask­ing what she can do to help or what needs to be done. She loves work­ing with the stu­dents. Audrey is also very reli­able. She is very busy with school and all of her extra cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties. She is in the class­room when she says she is going to be and has given plenty of notice if for some rea­son things change. I am very excited for Audrey to be fea­tured as the Teen of the Week. I hope she con­tin­ues to pur­sue her inter­est in edu­ca­tion. She does a great job work­ing with the stu­dents in the classroom.”

In addi­tion to her shad­ow­ing and vol­un­teer­ing, Audrey is tak­ing gov­ern­ment and eco­nom­ics, Hayes Play­ers, physics, sym­phonic choir and Hayes Singers.

As for the remain­der of her senior year, Audrey is look­ing for­ward to the bas­ket­ball games, when the “Euclid Entourage” (the stu­dent sec­tion) sup­ports the team dress­ing up with dif­fer­ent themes. There is also the musi­cal, she said, and just hav­ing fun, but still work­ing to keep her grades high, she added.

She is also tak­ing viola lessons weekly and prac­tic­ing daily for her audi­tions at Miami.

“I was already able to par­tic­i­pate with a Miami cham­ber group on a visit,” she said, adding that she hopes she can do so again.

Audrey offers the fol­low­ing advice to underclassmen.

“Just never give up. Stick with it, and have fun with it. Don’t care what other peo­ple think; if you love it, do it. And work hard always, but keep a pos­i­tive atti­tude, too,” she said.

Being on her own next year and begin­ning the next stage of her life she said is “really excit­ing but nerve-racking at the same time. I’ll have to rely on myself, my deci­sions. It’s scary when you think about it.”

Audrey is the daugh­ter of Diane and Michael Mungo­van of Delaware.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Dec 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.