After 18 years at North, John “JR” Peters will retire at the end of the 2023-2024 school year. As the Assistant Principal of College and Career Readiness and creator of the weekly newsletter, the “CCR Update,” Peters has left a significant impact on the school and its students.
Peters began working at North as a dean, planning to stay for a year as an in-between job, but instead spent his next five years in the position and eventually was promoted to the Assistant Principal of Student Services, a position that no longer exists as it was replaced by College and Career Readiness.
“College readiness interested me the most,” said Peters. “I like working with the counselors, and I like the fact that I still get to work with students a lot; not all positions have the same student interaction that I do.”
From future freshman night to graduation, Peters strives to assist students with their next-step decisions after high school through information nights, standardized testing, direct conversations with students and working with the counselors at North to ensure that each student understands the opportunities available to them. In recent years, Peters has overseen the movement towards including all forms of after-high school paths, not just college.
“We want you to be a productive member of society, whatever it is. And, over the years, we started to realize that we felt like we weren’t spending enough time on those students who weren’t going to college,” said Peters.
With this, Peters and the counselors have introduced more career focused information nights and opportunities, as opposed to college-exclusive. This can be partially accredited to their improved collaboration over the years.
“I’d like to say that one of the things that I’ve done is given the counselors some freedom and some latitude to come up with some new ideas; to not say ‘we’re doing it this way because that’s what we’ve always done,’” said Peters. “[I] try and support them as much as I can when they’ve got different ideas and things like that.”
Peters spent his time at North opening doors for its students, allowing them to explore their futures before actually experiencing them. Offering a helping hand and friendly smile at nearly every school-wide event, his impact reached every student at North and offered a constant source of support for those who were unsure about their life after high school.
“[My goal] is to not just get them through [school], but to get them through by pushing them to achieve and perform and setting them up so that that career opportunity, college opportunity, whatever that future opportunity is, it’s open to them,” Peters said. “Open doors for kids: I think that’s the best thing we can all do.”
