Madame Shea, nicknamed Waz early in life because of her lengthy maiden name, is a mother of two, self-acclaimed in class entertainer, and Waterford High School’s one and only French teacher.
Waz grew up as the eldest of four kids, two brothers and one sister, and her family is and was not any bit less interesting and humorous as Waz herself. Their family moto was, “nothing is better than homemade frosting” which she keeps near and dear to her heart to this day. As they all shared the last name Wasilefsky, they also all shared the nickname Waz. So if you saw that family of six around town and yelled, “Waz!” you were sure to see the whole family’s heads turn.
Waz’s youngest brother, Gage, and her have a twelve year age gap which made for some embarrassing moments for Waz. One time, she was talking to a potential love interest from her high school days in her driveway. Gage’s favorite activity was to ram his toy truck into her legs and coincidentally chose this rendez-vous as the perfect time to play with Waz. She tragically fell to the ground and it was safe to say, she was not going to be seeing this boy again willingly.
The rest of her family included her parents, brother named Devon, sister named Paxton, and dog Megan famously known for “walking backwards more times than one.” Her sister often stole her clothes catalyzing the most rage Waz has ever felt in her life, seeing her sister waltz around school in clothes she definitely did not ask to borrow.
Waz began high school with a bang—literally—with a disastrous chain of event during lunch on the first day of freshman year. As she went to go sit down at an empty lunch table, her friends not in sight, some senior jerk named Tim pulls out her chair from under her. Everyone turns to look at her on the floor with chocolate milk, pasta with meat sauce, and salad with ranch dressing as Tim runs away laughing. When her friends finally find her and they all begin laughing it off, suddenly Waz realizes that she cannot get up and exclaims “I broke my butt!” Two people had to help her into a wheelchair and make her grand exit to get diagnosed with a fractured tailbone. For two months, she walked around with donut pillow, go in the elevator, and shuffle through the hallway because walking normally hurt too much and wouldn’t be embarrassing enough. Tim came around with flowers and a box of chocolates after a scolding from his mother, but that never made up for the two years she had to put up with the nickname “Broken Butt Girl.”
Waz’s high school highlights include French class, her school’s advanced acapella group, being on teams, and hanging out with her friends. With her friends, she created music videos and drove around with the windows down in her 1999, red, Volkswagen Beetle which happened to catch on fire on the highway. If you are interested more into that story, be sure to stop by her room.
The true highlight of Waz’s education was when she did her exchange year in Paris during 2011. As she’s said to any French student that would listen, it was one of the best decisions of her life. She stated that “you will never have another opportunity to move to another country with everything prepped and planned for you.” She also noted that you make lifelong, international connections and friendships that you probably would not have been able to find as just a tourist.
Although her first dream job was to be a professional panda hugger, which still remains true, Waz discovered her passion for being a French teacher “through having some not so great teachers” herself. Surprisingly, Waz was a pretty shy kid herself and was singled out for it constantly by teachers she had growing up. Her late high school self thought that she would “want students to feel comfortable in classrooms” and that is when she decided becoming a teacher was for her, which Waterford High School French students couldn’t be happier about.
