While pirates typically raid ships and take hostages, for the second year in a row West Shore turned the tables and raided a Pirate from Palm Bay High School to bolster its English department.

Eighth-grade language arts teacher Carrie Aune, (pronounced on-nee), a former Palm Bay High teacher was hired during the summer to fill a vacancy created when Dr. Twila Patten left West Shore last spring for a position in Georgia.

“I used to work with [AP Literature teacher] Mary Nelson, the former department chair at Palm Bay,” Aune said. “When she transferred to West Shore, she was always telling me how great it was, how great the kids were and how high the expectations were.”

Aune has been teaching for 15 years, first at the Progress Village Middle Magnet School of Performing and Visual Arts in Tampa and then at Palm Bay High.

“West Shore is a much smaller campus,” she said. “At Palm Bay, there was about 2,000 students and 200 on faculty.  So I worked there for seven years and I didn’t know all of the teachers. Whereas here, everybody knows each other.”

Aune said she hopes to bring new ideas and events to the campus. One of her most memorable events from her teaching past was organizing a school-wide sock-hop that united all of the departments together.

Aune did express one regret about about leaving her previous school behind.

“I’ll really miss football,” she said. “Especially since Palm Bay has a really good team.”

By Lauren Youngson and Kayley Lew, Roar staff