Jay Wachtel, former Naperville North High School Assistant Principal of Operations, will act as NNHS’s Interim Principal for the 2024-2025 school year.
Wachtel assumed the role from former NNHS Principal Stephanie Posey, who informed the NNHS community of her retirement on June 14, 2024 via email. Wachtel said he hopes he’s made as seamless a transition as possible.
“I’m just kind of viewing things from a different lens. I hope because of that, students and staff and community, everybody, doesn’t see it as a huge transition,” Wachtel said.
Wachtel was the Interim Principal during the 2020-2021 school year. He said he’s looking forward to filling the post in a school that’s no longer in crisis mode.
“That’s the big difference, that we are in a position now [where] we can just do the right thing with community trust and have good outcomes, and have a lot of people happy about what’s going on,” Wachtel said.
Wachtel said he’s dedicated to helping this year’s students create their own unique school culture.
“We’re always a little different than we were last year…we want students to come here, and to put kind of their brand on it, or put their spin on it,” Wachtel said.
Among his multiple goals for this school year, Wachtel stated that one particular target within Naperville North’s school improvement plan is to utilize CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) and its social emotional learning competencies. CASEL, a nonprofit educational organization, has been innovating social emotional curriculum since 1994. Five of CASEL’s competencies were synthesized down to three for usage within NNHS: self management and awareness, responsible decision making and relationship skills.
“Each department selected one of those three areas that they are going to intentionally work with students on, and they’re going to work with all students in their classes,” Wachtel said.
Wachtel said the overarching aim for the incorporation of social emotional learning is to develop each student’s ability to work both individually and in a team setting.
“All of us are a work in progress on how we interact with others, how we are organized, how we communicate with others….all of us need to build the skills that are necessary to be successful academically, and then beyond high school,” Wachtel said.
Wachtel advised North students to look for social opportunities, advocating for all to search for an activity, extracurricular, event or friend group they can take part in.
“Get involved, find out how you belong, find out what your ‘Driven To’ is,” Wachtel said.
