Amber Wescott thought something wasn’t quite right about the new kid being introduced around her advanced placement psychology class at Paloma Valley High School.
She was right. Kinda.
The overall-wearing, bespectacled young woman with the aggressive manner was a student at the school -- in 2008.
Nia Sanchez -- the 2014 Miss USA title holder -- was back at the school on Tuesday, April 26, as part of a plan hatched with the teacher Melinda McCulloch that would serve as a social experiment -- on confidence, first impressions and judging others -- for the students to participate in and then talk about.
But Wescott almost scuttled the whole thing when she started questioning the transfer student’s story, just a few minutes into her performance.
Sanchez, 26, left for a short period and came back to the classroom -- sans the overalls and horn-rimmed glasses she donned as a disguise and looking much more like the woman who finished first runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant.
Then she credited Wescott for her powers of perception.
“I feel like it would not have gone so wrong, if you didn’t call me out right away, like in the first two minutes,” Sanchez said laughing. “But good job. You’re smart and you caught on.”
Although she was the high school homecoming queen and a member of the school’s dance team, Sanchez shared with the class some of her struggles growing up.
Her parents divorced when she was 6 and she and her brother went to live with their dad.
“I definitely had my ugly ducking phase,” Sanchez said.
McCulloch, who teaches the AP psychology class, has stayed in touch with Sanchez since she graduated in 2008. She said that Sanchez told her she was nervous about coming back.
I asked her, “how could you be nervous going back to Paloma when you stood in front of everybody in the world, literally?” said McCulloch.
But Sanchez noted that didn’t mean she would not come home from school crying because of something a classmate said.
“High school is a savage,” said Conner Gibson, 16, a sophomore in the class.
In recent months, Sanchez and a business partner have started hosting a series of workshops to build esteem in young women under the banner of “Universal Confidence.”
Wescott seems to have some of the concepts down. A few things tipped her off about what was afoot, including a faint ring tan on Sanchez’s ring finger. And she applied some of the principals about body language that she had learned in the class that told her this new student, despite her bravado, was trying to hide something.
“I’m a very assertive person,” said Wescott. “I like to think I’m confident ... so when I saw that her assert herself, in such a manner, I felt like I could automatically ask her certain questions.”
http://www.pe.com/articles/sanchez-801158-school-wescott.html
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