Senior Noah Gregg thrives at Dishman Hills, enrolls in nearly every class available

Noah Gregg walked through orientation at what was to be his high school the next four years and came home with a face filled with shock.

“He said ‘I can’t,’ ” Carissa Gregg, his mother, recalled. “‘I just can’t.’”

So Noah Gregg didn’t, and by choosing Dishman Hills instead, he proved something to himself, his mother and his teachers.

“He has proven that freshmen can come in and thrive,” Carissa Gregg said.

Usually students don’t spend four years at Dishman Hills like Noah Gregg has, said Rebecca Alberts, a teacher there. Gregg’s situation is so unique that he has basically taken every class Dishman Hills has to offer, to the point where staff members were ready to create independent study courses for him.

“He’s passed every class,” Alberts said. “We were running out of unique classes to offer him.”

Gregg said he was seeking a smaller school environment, and when he attended orientation at University High, “it was just too many people there.”

So he talked to his parents, and he enrolled at Dishman Hills. Gregg’s initiative has come to be a defining trait, Alberts said.

“He is an amazing kid,” she said. “He works hard in all his classes, and even if he doesn’t like a teacher or a subject, he is still going to give his all to it.”

Dishman Hills follows a half-day model, meaning students attend classes either in the morning or afternoon. That leaves other time for them to explore potential vocations and interests.

If any of those opportunities offered were anywhere near what he was interested in, Alberts said, Gregg signed up and was going.

“At first I had no clue what I was even going to do. I was thinking either military or mechanics or something,” Gregg said. “But I went to all the other trade schools to try some stuff out because the teachers recommended it, and that got me going.”

One such opportunity was to learn welding, and Gregg said he has taken to it. He said he enjoys the hands-on nature of the work and potentially sees it as a career.

“I think it’d be a great fit for me,” Gregg said. “There are a lot of different jobs (in the field), a huge variety.”

He is already in line to start at OXARC’s welder training program, and Carissa Gregg said she has requested a project from her son: a fire pit that looks like the Death Star from Star Wars.

Alberts said she was happy that Gregg was accepted into the OXARC program as a culmination of the hard work he has demonstrated the last four years.

“Noah being here from the beginning, from the first day of his freshman year, really shows everything someone could accomplish if they took us up on all those opportunities,” Alberts said. “It really shows what you can do if you take a school up on everything it has to offer.”