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“Take care of your heart and just remember that it's going to be okay.” That’s wise advice from high school student Kara Lynn Valerie Coates who has a lot of wisdom to share. She was born in Thunder Bay and is from Seine River. Outside of school, she likes to paint, draw and act in plays through local theatre groups. She’s been acting for five years. She’s in grade 11 and her favourite subjects are art and business.

Her advice for staying engaged in classroom discussions is to have a friend with you who isn’t shy to ask questions as a confidence booster. If you don’t have someone like that, keep in mind that asking questions isn’t embarrassing or weird. Coates finds during long discussions she tends to space out or fade in and out but to stay present, she draws or fidgets with her school supplies.

Something she’s realized is important is punctuality. Being late to class can leave you behind on the things you have to get done and Coates also finds it embarrassing to have to walk in on a class that’s already in progress. To avoid the gaze of the whole class and the extra workload, she makes an effort to be on time.

For a student who is falling behind on their assignments, her advice would be,

“Don't be embarrassed to ask for help. I know it's difficult, but don't be embarrassed. If you're waiting for something to happen that can make you realize ‘I need to start doing this’, you're going to be waiting there a really long time. Don't forget the person that you want to become. You have to work to get there, and you just need to remember that. Overall, just make sure that you're with the right people that encourage you to do better, too.”

When it comes to obstacles that Coates has faced over the course of her academic career, Coates has a learning disability which interferes with her ability to understand word problems. Something that helps her get around that challenge is reading the problem out loud to herself. In the last school year, she ended up socializing with the wrong crowd, students who didn’t care about school and would skip classes. She would act like they did and ended up getting suspended. After a while, she realized that she didn’t want to be part of that group anymore and she wanted to talk about the things that she enjoyed doing with people who shared her interests.

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As far as managing the stress of her academics, Coates finds herself burnt out and exhausted after school every day. When she gets home, she makes lunch for the next day, listens to music, makes herself tea and finds a way to wind down. She tries different ways to destress, listening to her body to see what it needs.

If she could point to a role model Coates looked up to growing up, it would be her mom, someone she describes as “super strong” and someone she admires a lot. Otherwise, she’s inspired by her family, friends, certain movements or celebrities she sees online. Often she will learn something she admires about them and adopt that behaviour if she thinks it’s beneficial.

Taking care of her heart and knowing she’s going to be okay, Kara Coates has worked through a learning disability and found her way out of the wrong crowd. Pursuing her passions of acting, drawing and painting, she’s broadening her horizons after school. Inspired by her mom and others around her, she is staying engaged in her school work and working hard to become the person she wants to be.

Thank you to Alison Tedford for writing this article.