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.
See previous articles in this series: Officer Nicholl and Business Teacher: Mr. Knight
Mrs. Spellman is an English teacher at Nordonia High School: She is also:
- the senior class adviser which means she is in charge of all senior activities and events.
- The pep club adviser which is the spirit group of the high school in the fall that does pep assembles and “skin squad” for events.
- The coach of the girl’s golf team.
She knew she wanted to be an educator since the age of 5 from watching the person who inspired her most, her mother. Seeing her mother work hard as a teacher inspired her to follow in her footsteps and become a teacher that is loved by her students. Her high school was similar to Nordonia except for the fact that her high school had a vocational school attached to her high school. School spirit wise she says it was better back when she was in school. She feels that students thought it was more important to be excited for school events back then but now it’s something that may not be “cool” to do. She thinks the school spirit is still good at Nordonia but not as good compared to back then so she’s “trying to re-instill that excitement back into the building”.
The technology was different back when she was younger to the point where she took a typing class on an actual typewriter. She thinks technology is a positive because she thinks students can do and learn great things with it. She also thinks that students are wasting their time using social media for a frivolous reason such as to tell her they’re going to eat a sandwich. Being a senior adviser she works with a $65,000 budget for clothing, prom, graduation, etc. Planning goes off without a hitch but it takes a lot of work to make that happen. So she spends a lot of time after school making sure everything runs as smoothly as possible.
She describes both prom and graduation as planning a wedding for a bunch of people every year. It takes a lot of work but she still says she enjoys it every year: Getting to see the success of a student, to see them attending the events, and watching it all cultivating at the end.
