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ON THE WILD
SIDE WITH MR. MIKE
Written by Javon Bell and Heather Farhrenkrug
At a mere thirty-one years of age, Mr. Mike Donnelly has proven to
be an invaluable part of the Wildcat staff. When asked for an
interview, Normal West's Project Oz staff member was eager to
oblige.
Mr. Donnelly, married and the father of three sons- ages 13, 11, and
10- stays on his toes as an avid member of Project Oz. Mr. Donnelly
first started participating in Project Oz when workers from the
organization sought him out. Reputable for his past efforts in
making the Bloomington-Normal community a better place for everyone
in the area, Project Oz members viewed Mr. Donnelly as an asset to
the program. They quickly made efforts to contact him and
incorporate him into the Oz program.
Project Oz is a non-profit organization that has been functioning in
the Bloomington-Normal area for 35 years. It began at the nearby
Bloomington High School. The main focus of the program is to help
students in the public school system and involve them in positive
community activities. Ways Project Oz is able to accomplish this is
through mentoring and building relationships with high school
students where they are at in the community. This could be anything
between friendly chit chat to resolving conflicts amongst students
to venting about home life situations. Mr. Donnelly feels his most
significant impact in the program and in the community is simply
being a resource to the students. He enjoys conversing with the
students
An
average day for Mr. Donnelly is arriving at the high school around
7:30am and meeting with students he has scheduled before school
starts. Then he meets with the administrative staff to talk about
events going on around school and what can be improved. He sits in
his office and thinks of ideas to help out student’s situations
around school that they are dealing with. Mr. Donnelly will then
have his door open to any student who just wants to get things off
their chest that have been going on in their lives. When he is not
busy, he likes to come up with ideas with his newly program called
Hype. He continues this process all day until around 4:00 when he
exits the building to go home.
Hype is a new group at Normal West that Mr. Donnelly created that
he wants to expand on as the years goes further on. He created an
environment that is for anybody who wants to talk about happenings
in their lives or outside school. The group has occasional meetings
that Mr. Donnelly construct to get students feel comfortable with
each other to discuss how to improve the program to other students
in the school. Mr. Donnelly blueprint of the project is to expand
the group to help kids in junior high schools and possibly in
elementary schools also. Mr. Donnelly wants his vision for Hype to
follow into the classrooms with the student’s knowledge to make
school more interesting and educational. In April, the plans to take
his group of high school students on college visits to get them
thinking about their futures. He has great expectations for himself
to make Hype stick around West for a long time.
When
he took the job at West he had some goals on his mind that he wanted
to do. He felt that he could make an impact to the students and the
administrative around Normal West. With Mr. Donnelly being so
relaxed and mellow with the students, he can do his job a lot better
coming from students prospective because he can relate to a lot of
things going on around school and in their lives.
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