North Welcomes Four New Staff Members For 2017-2018

 

New librarian Brigid Dolan talks to the freshman about the genres of books in a library. “I just like the people. Everybody here has been very welcoming and it just seems like a big family with students and staff. I’ve just been really impressed by that” said Dolan.
New librarian Brigid Dolan talks to the freshman about the genres of books in a library. “I just like the people. Everybody here has been very welcoming and it just seems like a big family with students and staff. I’ve just been really impressed by that” said Dolan.

In May, 2017, Dr.Tori Cain was announced Parkway North High’s new head principal. Formerly, Dr. Cain was an assistant principal. This change in position left her assistant principal job vacant. Along with Cain, other former staff members either retired, transferred to a different school, or got promoted leaving vacancies in their positions. This year, North welcomed four new staff members: Jada Bell, Suzanne Johnson, Brigid Dolan, and Melissa Hoener to fill those positions.

Senior principal Bell was formerly an administrator at Sumner High School for three years. Before that, she taught English in the Hazelwood School District and the Riverview Gardens School District.

“I became interested in Parkway because my husband works for Parkway and plus it is about 15 minutes from my home. Where I live, it took me an hour to get to all the way out to the city. I wanted to find something closer to home, and it was going to be a bonus to get into the same school district as my husband. Luckily, I was able to come to North,” said Bell.

French teacher Johnson, who is also new to North, decided to switch from middle school to high school after enjoyed her experience with high schoolers while teaching in France.

Johnson said, “I wanted to move up and teach upper levels because middle school’s only level one. I’ve only heard good things about Parkway School District and so far they’ve all been true”.

Although students have not gotten to know all of the new hires yet, some students have already had memorable moments with them.

“I haven’t really talked to her that much, but we had an all grade assembly with Bell, and she was talking about safety in the parking lot and just being good drivers. She took pictures of examples of people’s cars in our grade who were bad drivers and she asked the whole grade to identify whose car it was and essentially condemned them. Then, she took examples of good drivers and everyone could recognize whose car it was so people started cheering and I thought that was really funny,” said senior Sohana Pai.

The transition from their former school to North has been a bit of a struggle for some of the new staff, but they seem to be getting used to the school already.

Bell said, “It’s overwhelming. Parkway School District is by far one of the top-notched school districts and North is exceptional. Whenever you are coming to an exceptional setting, there’s a whole lot of new things to learn and establish so that person can be successful. My struggle would just be all of the norms and all the way systems work at this school”.

Ijeoma Nkenchor, Assistant Editor-In-Chief