At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, North East School of the Arts (NESA) introduced its new director, Ms. Marisol Askey, who has an extensive history in both education and the arts. Prior to her tenure at NESA, Ms. Askey already had a comprehensive career in the education field having been an educator and assistant principal at several other schools within the district. In her youth, Ms. Askey participated in a variety of extracurriculars ranging from ballet to theatre to poetry and even debate. It’s no wonder why Ms. Askey would be interested in NESA, seeing as she’s no stranger to the world of visual and expressive arts.
As for how she ended up at NESA, Ms. Askey said that it had always been a dream of hers to end up there, “When I found out about NESA I knew it was where I wanted to end up,” Ms. Askey went on to talk about her journey as a student who struggled to fit in, “I was one of those weird kids that didn’t have a home in a traditional school. It wasn’t until someone saw me as something special and not something that should just be put off in a corner, that I began to blossom.” Ms. Askey comments that in her educational career she’s made a multitude of mistakes, but because of her own teachers and experiences she found herself falling back in love with educating and back on the right path, “Life has a way of setting you straight when it needs to,” said Ms. Askey.
For the 2024-2025 school year, Ms. Askey is striving to continue helping students blossom and hopes to continue mingling with everyone. She mentions briefly the uniqueness of NESA, which fully encapsulates everything she stands for, “It’s where I’m supposed to be. Seeing how unique and individual [everyone is] and how valued that individuality is – is my favorite thing, by far.”