As a passionate leader, athlete, and scholar, Shae Laskowski-Trant has spent her high school years working to shape both her community and her own future. Serving as IB Career Vice President and co-founding Human Kindness Club, which now boasts over 150 members, Shae embraced every opportunity to make an impact. Shae also excelled athletically, competing on the varsity track and field team for pole vault and the varsity swim and dive team.
Throughout her time at Chandler High School, Shae demonstrated strengths not only in academics (achieving an impressive 4.83 GPA), but also in developing relationships with friends and mentors that shaped who she is today. Shae credits her friends and teachers like Ms. Courtney Kemp and Ms. Tami Pantel with inspiring her to stay grounded, focused, and resilient.
Looking back, Shae describes her high school experience as full of opportunities and growth. Despite challenges like balancing her role as the oldest of five siblings with her academic and extracurricular commitments, Shae always found support in her community and pride in her perseverance.
Her advice to underclassmen and fellow seniors is to “enjoy the journey, don’t take everything too seriously, and trust that everything will work out the way it’s meant to.”
Shae learned that success is not about checking every box perfectly, but about finding happiness in where you are—even if life doesn’t go exactly as planned.
Shae’s dream of becoming a lawyer has remained steady since her freshman year. After graduation, she plans to double major in Mechanical Engineering and Economics at the University of California before pursuing law school.
As she graduates from Chandler High School, Shae Laskowski-Trant leaves behind a legacy of hard work, kindness, and the reminder that sometimes, the best way forward is simply to “ride the wave.”
Andres Lara Treviño’s Chandler High School journey started in the tenth grade, when he moved to Chandler from his hometown of Coatzacoalcos, Mexico.
Andres was still learning to speak English at the time, and he remembers that people would correct him a lot whenever he tried to speak. He had only himself and his brother to rely on. His brother was his “torch,” Andres
explained.
Thankfully, Andres eventually found a “second home” at CHS and made friends that he would soon call family. Now he spends much of his time participating in his FIRST Robotics Competition team called Degrees of Freedom #6413. There, Andres constructs and programs robots and competes with other teams from across
the entire country.
Andres’ critical role on the robotics team is serving as programming lead. This role allowed him to develop both his coding and English language skills at the same time as he helped his teammates solve tricky coding problems.
Coding has become a major part of Andres’ life, and he plans to pursue his passion for coding full-time after high
school.
Andres offered advice for students like him who find themselves taking high school classes and learning English at the same time: “Being involved in multiple things is the best way to learn English. To learn anything, you need a lot of people. If you can’t do it alone, there are always people there for you.”
