BW’s Jones goes above and beyond

Con­ner Jones

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Big Walnut’s Con­ner Jones has good advice for others.

“It’s good to be involved with every­thing. You meet new peo­ple, make new friends. It opens a lot of doors,” he said.

The senior should know, he has been involved in school activ­i­ties and in lead­er­ship roles since the fifth grade when he first served on stu­dent council.

“I’ve been work­ing on my lead­er­ship since I was lit­tle. I’ve always liked it,” he said of his var­i­ous lead­er­ship positions.

Angie Stooks­bury is stu­dent coun­cil advi­sor at Big Wal­nut. She has worked with Con­ner for the past four years in stu­dent coun­cil where Con­ner is this year’s president.

“From fresh­man year to his senior year, Con­ner Jones has been a hard­work­ing, car­ing, young man ded­i­cated to mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in every­thing he does. I am so proud of him for never giv­ing up and always work­ing hard to achieve his goals. He has been out­stand­ing aca­d­e­m­i­cally in his classes, as well as a leader in stu­dent coun­cil and as a leader of his class.”

Stooks­bury said that “both dur­ing and after school Con­ner is the first to vol­un­teer for extra respon­si­bil­ity to make a dif­fer­ence in his school and com­mu­nity. He goes above and beyond and that is what makes Con­ner truly great.”

So far senior year has been going pretty well, Con­ner said. As pres­i­dent of stu­dent coun­cil, he has kept very busy, so it is good that his role as pres­i­dent of senior class will not demand more of his time until later in the year when he will need to con­cen­trate on grad­u­a­tion and select­ing the class gift.

And then there is the speech he will make for graduation.

“I’m already think­ing about it,” he said.

Most of Conner’s vol­un­teer work is through stu­dent coun­cil, includ­ing a food drive (which actu­ally raised $300 more this year than last) and a change drive. There is also work for win­ter home­com­ing and Peace Week.

Peace Week, Con­ner explained, offers daily assem­blies for stu­dents on a par­tic­u­lar theme. Last year, it was bul­ly­ing. This year, the topic will be some­what lighter — mak­ing friends.

It is hard, Con­ner said, to come up with speak­ers and top­ics that stu­dents will want to lis­ten to.

Among other vol­un­teer activ­i­ties, Con­ner vol­un­teers with Ohio Reads, has helped with the Mutt March and helps with Relay for Life each year.

As the end of the year draws closer, Con­ner said so does the real­iza­tion it will be the last time for attend­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in activ­i­ties. As it is, he was unable to attend most of the foot­ball games due to his work schedule.

Besides his vol­un­teer work, Con­ner also works 20 hours over four days each week at a local pizza shop, often clos­ing the shop by himself.

He laughed about where his earn­ings go.

“Gas,” he said, adding he lives pretty far away.

He is “almost decided” on attend­ing the Uni­ver­sity of Akron where he will major in busi­ness and study either human resources or busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion. He hopes to minor in Span­ish, which he has stud­ied for sev­eral years, and enjoys speak­ing conversationally.

Akron has a good hon­ors pro­gram where Con­ner hopes to take hon­ors course­work in both Span­ish and business.

“I liked the cam­pus,” he said, adding he had four or five other school vis­its. “I could see myself there.”

He selected busi­ness as a major because he “likes work­ing with peo­ple a lot. I like hav­ing responsibility.”

Dora Riggs is Conner’s Span­ish teacher.

“Con­ner (or Pedro as we like to call him in class) is one of those stu­dents who makes a class fun to teach. He is not only the type of stu­dent you can depend on to get a task done well, but also one you can count on to make it fun and exciting.

“As Leo Club advi­sor, I’ve also seen the heart he has for ser­vice. He is a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for Ohio Reads and reg­u­larly helps out on ser­vice projects with the Span­ish club and Stu­dent Coun­cil. Con­ner has con­tributed a lot to Big Wal­nut High School and is very deserv­ing of this recognition.”

Besides tak­ing Span­ish IV this year, he also takes advanced place­ment cal­cu­lus and psy­chol­ogy, anatomy, dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, Eng­lish and con­cert choir.

Con­ner said it will prob­a­bly be hard to leave the area and work else­where in a career.

“I’m a home­body. I enjoyed high school a lot. I will miss it,” he said, adding he would not mind return­ing to cen­tral Ohio; he did not dis­miss Cincin­nati. “Though I’m par­tial to Cleve­land,” he reflected.

Con­ner is the son of Shan­non Mignogno and Jamie Jones of Sunbury.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Jan 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.