Kodee Oyler isn’t the stereotypical high school girl. Rather than sitting at home on her couch binge-watching Netflix and complaining about homework, Oyler enjoys racing motorcycles with her brothers, reading romance novels, and spending time with kids, especially her two younger brothers.
This year, Oyler was awarded the Sterling Scholar award at Highland for family and consumer sciences.
Family and consumer sciences is a CTE pathway in high school that can be pursued by taking various classes. These classes help students understand the dynamics of relationships among people and their personal environments, focusing on the impact of physical, biological and social environments on human behavior and development.
Oyler decided to take a couple of classes like this, simply because she is interested in human relationships, and believes these classes will help with her specific future goals.
“The reason that I decided to pursue family and consumer sciences is because I want a big family myself,” Oyler said. “I want a lot of little kids and I want to live on a farm and be able to homeschool my kids, so that pathway just really intrigued me because it was something that I wanted for my life.”
Oyler already has a ton of experience around kids because of how much time she spends with her own siblings. Oyler’s parents run a business, so they are often busy with work. While they are at work, Oyler babysits her siblings and spends time with them.
“Kodee is really home oriented,” Highland senior Kenzie Coleman said. “She is really strong support in her own family.”
One of Oyler’s favorite things to do is spend time with her family. When she’s not babysitting, she’s racing. Olyer’s been racing motorcycles since she was a little girl.
“I really like racing motorcycles. It’s a little different than what you would expect,” Oyler said. “But one of the reasons that I really like doing that is because it’s a way for me my parents and my two younger brothers to connect.”
When Oyler was young, she would go to the race track with her family every weekend. It was a great way for her to bound with her family and it provided a lot of fun. As she got older, her various commitments became more demanding and she hasn’t been able to ride as much.
When Oyler is not racing motorcycles or helping out with her little brothers, Oyler is often reading.
“I love reading,” Oyler said. “I would say usually fantasy books and romance are typically the genres that I go for.”
Along with reading, Oyler puts a lot of time into school and making sure she stays on top of all of her classes.
On top of her core classes, Oyler took a lot of classes in the FACTS field and realized that it might be a pathway that she could pursue.
“I continued to take classes in family and consumer sciences just because the classes were fun and the people in the classes were supportive of each other,” Oyler said. “It wouldn’t have been as fun or intriguing if my teachers had been super strict, and didn’t care about me as a person, but because of the teachers and kids that I had in the classes, I wanted to continue to be in that environment.”
This year, one of the FACTS classes that Oyler took was child development. Oyler had a great teacher, former Highland teacher Monique Nielsen, for this class and it helped further her resume in family and consumer sciences.
“This year we got a new teacher for child development,” Oyler said. “Ms. Neilson. Made the class a blast and really encouraged the students to work hard and I had a couple friends in that class that gave me support and I really liked that.”
As Oyler began the process of applying for colleges, she worked her friend Kenzie Coleman. Kenzie is very into music and she decided to apply for the musical sterling scholar award. After spending time with Oyler during applications, Kenzie helped her to realize that she has a very full resume in the family consumer sciences field and it might be a good idea for her to apply.
“She wasn’t super confident about her skills in applying and we just had written a bunch of college essays and all that,” Coleman said. “I felt confident about my application and since she’s one of my good friends, I just wanted to encourage her with her skills, and help her realize that she could do it and that we could do it together.”
After applying for these awards, both Kenzie and Kodee received a Sterling Scholar award, and had a great experience winning together.
“We pulled each other aside and were asking if the other got the email,” Coleman said. “We were so excited and just proud of ourselves that we both did it even though it was something that was really hard.”
With this award, Oyler has a really strong resume, and it shows the level of commitment she has towards kids and helping others. She still hasn’t quite settled on what she is going to do for college but has plenty of options.
“It’s still up in the air but what I plan to do is either go to the U or go to Slcc and then transfer to the U. I honestly been very indecisive about college it just snuck up on me I feel like,” Oyler said. “I don’t know exactly what I want to study yet, but I’ve thought about education, architecture, and business.”
No matter what Oyler decides, she will have a bright future with all of the experiences she has had throughout high school, and her experience in family and consumer sciences.
“I feel like I have to decide what I have to do now even though people in their 50s are changing their careers. So, like I really don’t need to know exactly what I want to do right now,” Oyler said. “But I think taking the classes that I have in high school have helped me a lot with experiencing different areas where I might go into.”
