By Devin Parish
I am a Senior at Nordonia High School. For my senior internship, I decided to work with Nordonia Hills News. Julie D’Aloiso and I came up with the idea to create a 5 part series about Nordonia High School staff. The 5 people who were chosen were: Mrs. Spellman, Mrs. Wenzel, Mr. Knight, Officer Nicholl, and Ms. Archer.
Each was chosen for a reason. One reason is that all 5 of them are different from each other when it comes to what they do at Nordonia High School. The other being more specific to each person: Ms. Archer because she worked at Key West High School for 10 years prior to becoming a principal at Nordonia. Mrs. Wenzel because she is the current graduating classes counselor and has been here just as long as they have. Mrs. Spellman because she is a senior advisor and does a lot of behind the scenes work with all senior activities. Officer Nicholl because many students know of and love him but may not know his story or thought process. Mr. Knight because he is a newer teacher and we wanted the perspective of someone who hasn’t been teaching at Nordonia for a long time.
We wanted to know how: teachers, counselors, officers, and principals felt about the classes they offered, and just Nordonia High School in general. It was also interesting to learn what it was like for them when they were young and to compare their high school to Nordonia.
Each week for the next 5 weeks, I will share one of the interviews. If you can go onto the website NordoniaHills.News, you can listen to the podcast for each one. Just look for the tab that says PODCAST. Thank you and I hope you enjoy the experience….
Officer Nicholl is a Macedonia police officer and a school resource officer at Nordonia High School. He has been a police officer for 28 years, 3 of his most recent years have been at Nordonia High School. He is also a graduate of Nordonia who lives in the area with three kids who all have graduated from Nordonia. The reason why he became a police officer was that a lot of his friends were officers and they pushed him to take the test. The inspiration behind why he became a police officer was mostly because of his best friend Keith Obbley.
Comparing Nordonia to how it is now to back when Officer Nicholl was a student, he states it was very different. He says you never saw the principal or teachers in the hallway, the only time you would see the principal is when you were called down to the office. Now Teachers and principals are in the halls just as students are and can most notably be found in the cafeteria during lunch periods. This makes students see their teachers as more than a person behind a door and as someone they can just walk up and talk to. To continue comparing Nordonia more to it’s older days, the classes were also different. There were no distractions, it was just you, the book, and the teacher. Now kids are on their phones or Chromebooks playing games or listening to music, however he isn’t saying it’s every student but he has seen it before. It was his choice to become a school resource officer and he had been pushing for it for a long time. With Former Mayor Migliorini making it his goal to get an officer in the school, Officer Nicholl saw his chance. He really enjoys being a school resource officer since he gets to talk to kids and teach them about showing respect and to take responsibility. He loves answering their questions, giving them life lessons, and telling them it’s not that bad at home when their parents are on them about chores or other things. He sometimes talks to government classes from time to time about what he and other officers do as police officers and has been doing this even before he was a resource officer.
Click the green arrow to listen to the podcast…
