By Elisa Reamer
Kenna Ducoff, a senior at Batavia High School, sits in her bedroom for hours working on different projects. She shakes in her seat at a club meeting, becoming more and more anxious for it to end. Ducoff needs all the time she can get in order to get everything she has on her plate completely done by their deadlines.
Ducoff is a part of Psychology Club, Interact Club, Political Debate Club, Link Crew, Rock the Runway, five national honor societies, was a part of “After the Bell” for BATV, and competitively danced for six years for several different dance companies.
Ducoff plans to major in psychology and become an experimental psychologist. Because of this, she took AP Psychology, is the president of Psychology Club, and received a five on her AP exam. Jessica Malone, the Psychology teacher and the club sponsor at BHS, has only seen the best from Ducoff.
“She showed me she was committed to contributing to the club her junior year because she always helped to make sure each task we took on was a success, even if that meant doing work outside of the club meeting time,” Malone said. “I also knew she would be a successful club president because of her involvement with volunteer service with Marklund, a home for adults with cognitive disabilities.”
Not only does she devote her time to making Psychology Club the best it can be, Ducoff has to spend hours creating a dress for Rock the Runway. Rock the Runway is a school event where students create a dress out of household items. They choose a model and BHS hosts a fashion show to show off all the hard work students put into their designs. Ducoff is creating a dress for the event and is one of the Board of Directors. The directors are the entire background of the show.
Dawn Zalkus, an art teacher at BHS and the mastermind behind the show, only picks people who show that they are completely reliable to be one of the directors. According to Zalkus, Ducoff is a member of National Art Honor Society, she is one of the people who create the murals around the school, and painted a mural for the BATV.
Melissa Lo, a French teacher and coordinator for National French Honor Society, believes that she did the right thing by choosing Ducoff to be one of the members of NFHS because she can see that Ducoff puts 100 percent in everything she does.
“(Ducoff) was accepted into NFHS because she had all As in her French classes and has a high overall GPA,” Lo said. “Also, she is a very hardworking student who asks questions when she needs clarification, earns high grades on her assessments, has a love of the French culture and language, and she also has a positive and bubbly personality. She is a pleasure to teach.”
Not only is she the president of Psychology Club or on the Board of Directors, she is also a part of Link Crew and P.E. Leadership. Link Crew has about 100 members, who were all chosen based on an application. The crew’s members are juniors and seniors who all have proven that they are responsible enough to show freshman how to be accepted into the school.
P.E Leadership is a gym class where juniors and seniors get to connect with the Vocational Transitional Program (VTP) class. The VTP class is where students with any type of learning disability can feel safe and learn at their own pace. The leaders are assigned a student from the VTP class, teach them exercises, and do choir with the students.
Ducoff feels that all of her work will help her in college and will it make it easier to adjust to the busy life of a college student. Though sometimes she struggles with time management, she knows that school always comes first.
“I am most proud of my tenacity to get involved in these activities after going through such a hard time first semester freshman year since I had just quit dance,” she said. “I don’t mind taking on extra tasks in order to reach my goals.”