By: Emily Silva, Lily Mendes, Jadyn Fowler, and Madison Fortney
Mrs. Aston, the new Redwood ASB Director for the 19-20 year has had a diverse journey before coming back to her home state.
Originally from Porterville California, Mrs. Aston attended Monache High School where she was inspired by one of her teachers, Mr. Coont, “He was my ASB advisor, and I was his Teacher’s Aide at the time.” She gained interest in teaching because of “how he related to kids, and was overall loved by the school.”
While attending Monache High School, she lived with her mother, father, sister, and two brothers. She was extremely involved in CSF, ASB, volleyball, track, and basketball. Aston stated, “My parents were always super supportive of me.” This support eventually led her to travel the world.
Although she had an interest in teaching, right after high school Mrs. Aston moved to Utah “and did business for a year.” She did not like the cold environment and overall found out that business wasn’t for her. After discovering that, she applied to Hawaii BYU college.
When in Hawaii, Mrs. Aston was exposed to “a variety of different cultures” she got to experience a lot that she never thought she could do. Mrs. Aston tells us, “growing up in the central valley and being in a small town, then being able to go to Hawaii, it gave me a lot of different perspectives.”
During this time she met her husband, Luke Aston in some of her classes, for he was studying physical science and she was studying physical education.
Luke Aston is a well known basketball player who was born and raised in New Zealand and played basketball throughout high school and later went on to play for the Canterbury Rams in Hawaii.
They later got married at the age of 21 in Laei Hawaii. She had spent 5 years there and she also worked for six months after her college experience. While still in Hawaii, she was given a surprising internship to go to Fiji.
Mrs. Aston really loved Fiji, “It was by far my favorite place.” While she was there on her internship she was living in a remote village for about 6 weeks and “taught along side the teachers that were there and learned from them.” While she was there she also got to learn about their culture and spend everyday with families and kids that lived in the village. “It was an amazing experience for me.” She has gone back twice since then.
After her 6 weeks in Fiji she went to New Zealand, to meet her husband, Luke’s family, while also just having a love for travel. They lived there for about three years and she had become a physical education teacher. Mrs. Aston tells us about how high school was in New Zealand and how it was very different compared to high school here in the United States,“the students there had to wear uniforms and the grading process was different than us.” While she was teaching there she was teaching grades 9 to 13, “I really loved teaching physical education while I was there, it was something I really did enjoy.”
Mrs. Aston moved from New Zealand with Luke back to her hometown, Porterville. New Zealand is about 20 hours ahead of the U.S and the seasons are opposite, Mrs Aston and her husband moved here during their winter there but when they got here in July it was our very hot summer. Mrs Aston is now teaching ASB and student activities here at Redwood and she is really enjoying what she’s doing here.
Tags: Redwood, redwood asb