The top 2 students in Staples High School’s Class of 2026 are standouts in the classroom, of course.
But Isabel Jo and Uma Choudhury – the valedictorian and salutatorian, respectively – are accomplished far beyond the classroom too.
Isabel is an All-State musician (in two instruments). She has spent a decade as a competitive horseback rider. And she is an active member of the school’s No Place for Hate organization.
Uma is a black belt in taekwando. She also captains Staples’ Science Olympiad team, and is president of the Math Honor Society.
Both young women – products of the Westport Public Schools since elementary school — will speak at graduation ceremonies on June 15.
Isabel’s musical career began at Coleytown Elementary School. It continued through Coleytown Middle School. Instructor Jim Andrews gave her a great foundation, she says. At Staples, where she plays both viola and violin, she is concertmistress of both the Symphonic and Chamber Orchestras.
Her interest in horses began even earlier. Her family was looking for houses in Westport, and passed a barn. Isabel was fascinated.
Isabel Jo
She rides now at the Fairfield County Hunt Club. She competes in equitation – the highest level of jumping – at national events. In May she’ll do her senior internship at the Hunt Club, working with horses.
With No Place for Hate, Isabel helps educate younger students about bullying and bias, during Staples’ Connections periods.
Classes like Advanced Placement Chemistry with William Jones have challenged Isabel. At Dartmouth College she plans to study the subject, as well as statistics and music.
Her four years of orchestra classes are among her most favorite at Staples. Isabel credits teachers Carrie Mascaro and Jeri Brima with “fostering a welcoming community for everyone, no matter what role music plays in their lives.” For her, it is a central part of life.
“Music is the universal language,” Isabel notes. “It unites people around a common role, despite whatever differences they have.”
Isabel downplays her achievement of earning the highest grade point average among the 400-plus students in this year’s graduating class.
“So many kids work hard. There’s so much luck involved, in being .01 point lower or higher.”
Her favorite part of high school has been “finding a group of people,” primarily in orchestra. “They don’t all think alike. But they’ve understood my goals, and supported me. At the end of my time here, I really appreciate that.”
Uma’s path to salutatorian was similarly unplanned, and equally well-rounded.
As a black belt in taekwando, she has learned to “do things I couldn’t have imagined doing.” She gives back too, by helping out at a summer camp.
Uma’s main Science Olympiad events are code busters (math-related decrypting and encrypting cyphers), and physics-related circuits and electricity. She earned a gold medal in ecology last year, after medaling in code busters as a sophomore.
Uma Choudhury
Her freshman Applied Algorithmic Design course – a programming class with Dr. Nick Morgan – sparked an interest in computer programming. It combines her passions for math, physics and biology. She hopes to pursue it in college, perhaps in a research capacity.
But Uma was also excited by her junior year Contemporary World Studies class, with Cathy Schager. “We looked at issues, researched them and discussed them,” she says. “When you’re caught up with academics you can’t always see what’s going on in the world. But Ms. Schager was very helpful, and made sure we did.”
Other inspiring teachers included Noreen McGoldrick, an English instructor who helped Uma become a better writer and reader, and Philip Abraham, whose AP Statistics Class was “interesting, fun, and applicable to lots of different fields.”
Like Isabel, Uma did not set out to achieve a top GPA. “I just wanted to do well for myself,” she says. Her selection as salutatorian was “a happy surprise.’
She will do her senior internship at Citizen Invention, a Westport-based science education program. In the fall, she heads to Carnegie Mellon University.
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The curriculum was demanding, but the growth happened in the small, quiet moments.
