Teacher trainer, the fabulous Ms. Noll is a teacher for students and aspiring teachers—training them to use better teaching methods.
Photo by: Erin king; Photographer

By: Bobbi Zahn, Activities Manager

Ms. Donna Noll, teacher extraordinaire, has been teaching at Seminole High School for the past 16 years. Throughout this time, she has taught almost every math offered at Seminole. For this school year, she teaches Calculus Honors, Algebra 2, and IB Calculus and Statistics. Along with the heavy course load, she is a supervising teacher and one of two school based mentors for NEST (New Educator Support Team). Noll designed NEST, which is now implemented at Seminole.

“NEST is an induction/mentoring program so new teachers can have a community of veteran teachers that can help them. Right now, I am one of two school based mentors along with Mrs. Walters, who is the lead coordinator,” says Ms. Noll.

Along with NEST, Noll mentors UCF interns to help them become teachers in the future. For the first semester, Ms. Erika Keller was Noll’s intern.

Keller says, Noll “does a really good job at teaching her lessons and really cares about her students. Ms. Noll gives me a lot of pointers on classroom management and how to switch my lessons up.”

Not only is Noll helping UCF interns fill their requirements for college, but she is also enabling them with the skills needed in a classroom. Noll is not only teaching the students but she is teaching future teachers.

Senior Brandon Allan says, “I think [Keller] is a great intern because she is good at connecting with students. Before Ms. Noll instructed her, she sometimes skipped a lot of steps but later she became better at explaining steps.”

Mentoring teachers seemed like the logical and natural approach to take for Noll. She feels that first year teachers are typically trying to make it through the first semester, not paying much heed to their techniques. Once Noll hit the mastery stage, it was rational to share what she knew with others. This idea pushed Noll into creating NEST.

Noll also has a talent for explaining difficult concepts. Junior Yeimy Bermudez says, “She goes out of her way to get her point across. Ms. Noll was very involved when Ms. Keller was teaching.”

When Noll first began college, she struggled with studying and failed her first time. After working, she went back to get her degree at Virginia Tech and is now one of the most experienced teachers at Seminole. This experience makes for an excellent teacher and in the future, Ms. Noll will switch roles and become the student. She plans on getting a doctorate on Education Leadership at UCF in 2015 to expand her education.