After attending Franciscan Montessori Earth School (FMES) for her whole life, sophomore Avari Brocker left with a great experience. 

“I don’t think I would be anywhere close to the person I am today without FMES,” she said. “It has taught me everything about who I am.” 

Even though Brocker had such a positive time at her middle school, the transition to La Salle was difficult for her. One reason being her learning disability. “It takes me twice as long to read something, it takes me twice as long to write something,” she said. 

Despite this learning disability setting her back in the beginning of her freshman year, it provided her with many new skills and lessons. “It also taught me time management, and it taught me that sometimes in real life, you need to work twice as hard in order to achieve what you want to achieve,” she said.

Although it took a while, Brocker eventually found her place at La Salle on the Student Council as the freshman class president. “Once I found my footing, I found a lot of things here that I clicked with,” she said.

Brocker joined student council because she loves to lead, a trait which she got from her dad. “I kind of have a way of seeing how people work together, what their strengths are and how we can put that together towards a bigger goal,” she said.

Along with being freshman class president, Brocker started a club called Trash to Treasure, where club members collect cans from around the school and put that money towards making blankets for kids with chronic illnesses and veterans’ families.

Brocker has a heavy course load including taking a sign language class at Clackamas Community College outside of La Salle. One of her many classes that she is taking is Zero Period Choir. Merging those two classes together is one of Brocker’s goals this year. “I’m going to start interpreting for La Salle choir. One of my biggest goals for that is to really make an impact with that,” she said.

This workload often interferes with her life outside of school. “I don’t have a lot of free time, but when I do I make sure to make the most of it with my friends,” she said.

Looking ahead three years, Brocker hopes to go to the University of Cambridge in London. But if she decides to stay in the United States, she hopes to attend the University of Rochester or Dartmouth College.

In college, Brocker is planning to major in biomedical engineering and minor in computer science. After that, she hopes to head to a graduate program to become a prosthetics engineer, as her goal coming out of college is to eventually design prosthetics. “I’m going to make some of the first robotic prosthetics and hopefully try to make improvements in that field that will improve people’s lives,” she said.

If Brocker could meet one famous person, she would choose Bethany Hamilton, a famous surfer who tragically lost her arm in a shark attack. “She shows that even though her life got really complicated when she only had one arm, she still managed to do everything she wanted to do,” she said. Along with being an inspiration to Brocker, she also gave her a quote to live by. “I don’t need easy, I just need possible,” she said.

If Brocker could give her past self a piece of advice, it would be to ease up on herself. Coming from a Montessori school, she didn’t have a concept of what grading at a different school was like so she ended up pushing herself very hard last year. Because of that, she learned that grades are not worth it if your mental health is suffering. “It’s not going to prevent me from my dreams,” she said. “Sometimes caring about yourself and your mental health are more important than whatever the other things you are trying to do.”