Despite retiring from his teaching career last year, former NACS teacher Rick Norton still has plans to make his impact on the school district. With school board elections fast approaching, Norton has decided to run for the school board, facing seven others for important roles in the school district. He feels that his 36 years as a teacher and parent, alongside hearing the students’ opinions for all of that time, would allow him to apply three unique perspectives on issues NACS is facing right now and may be facing in the future.

Although he isn’t finished dedicating his time to our school district, quitting teaching hasn’t been without change for him. 

When asked if he felt retiring was the right decision, Norton explains that his schedule is busy.

“It’s around this time that I would be most busy in the year, with processing orders and answering emails from parents, I usually wouldn’t get to bed until 1 a.m.,” Mr. Norton said.

Despite this, he does miss the classroom. In particular, he misses the “question of the day” where he has the class think about some question that didn’t necessarily apply to the class he was teaching, and if the student was comfortable, they would share their thoughts with the rest of the class.

As he is no longer required to put time into the classroom, he’s had much more free time to dedicate to his business, Creative Notebook Solutions. Creative Notebook Solutions manufactures notebooks for PLTW and STEM classes throughout the United States. These notebooks are formatted for specific classes and are meant to allow students to take a more professional approach to designing and conducting experiments.

Some of the classes that Mr. Norton taught were construction trades and manufacturing. However, perhaps the most important part of his classes wasn’t even the curriculum. Every year, he would ask the students to raise money for the Wells for Life charity, a charity dedicated to building wells for fresh water in foreign communities that don’t have access to it. As motivation for the students, at certain donation milestones, Mr. Norton would buy the class donuts or pizza, depending on what the class would vote for. Although he has left the classroom, the charity remains promoted within Carroll, with the Interact clubs sponsor Christine Binns.

“We are hoping to continue supporting the Wells for Life Charity as a project through Interact Club and Student Council,” Binns said.  “I am still working on getting things organized, but it’s our hope to keep it going.”