There has been a lot of buzz flying around about one of the newest additions to the West Brunswick staff, our assistant principal, Jonathan Paschal. Many students have wondered who he is, where he is from and what he does. Paschal is one of our school administrators and covers many areas involving student-teacher relations, but PBIS is his main focus.

When asked about his upbringing, Paschal said, “I was big in my youth group and I always thought that I was interested in ministry because I wanted to work with students. […] I eventually went for Teaching Fellows, which you might not have heard of, North Carolina Teaching Fellows. It was a program that paid for college and you just had to teach for four years afterwards. […] I basically went to school for four years and worked for four years and decided that I loved what I did because I was changing the lives of students.”

Paschal taught at New Hanover High School and Cape Fear Academy, but felt the need to work as an administrator. Paschal decided to return to college and higher his education, receiving a MSA (Masters of Science in Administration) degree from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. After receiving his degree, Paschal began his journey as an administrator at Lincoln Elementary and Williston Middle School before starting his career here at West.

Paschal’s favorite part about his job at West is how family-oriented the school is. Especially because of the warm welcome he received from the population.

“It feels like everybody is on the same page and trying to work towards each student’s success, and you don’t always have that at some schools,” Paschal says.

Paschal and the administration have been working extremely hard this year to promote student success and growth.

“We have a direction for student success; that direction is personalized for each student. […] We want what is best for the kids. […] Developing and strengthening the school pride that we have will bring more engagement into the classroom, and we hope that it brings the love for teaching and learning to all of our kids with the end goal in mind of making them all successful.”