Ahead of the 2024 Crystal Apple Awards for outstanding educators on May 22, Salem Reporter is profiling several of the 97 nominees. The awards are presented by the McLaran Leadership Foundation and the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce at the Salem Convention Center. Tickets are sold out.

Nikki Schmidgall’s job interview started with a student pulling a fire alarm.

The cacophony set off a chaotic afternoon for students at the Behavior Intervention Center — an intensive special education program in the Salem-Keizer School District. Some had heightened reactions to the alarm, and the school’s employees worked to calm everyone down before the interview took place. 

Schmidgall wasn’t phased, her supervisor Kathryn Santana said. Instead, she took careful note of the slight actions school staff took to keep students safe and respond to their needs. She was hired as a teacher soon after, starting last October.

“She has an incredible ability to balance authority with her students while still providing unconditional love and emotional safety,” Santana wrote.

Schmidgall said she connects most with kids who need help before they can be successful in the classroom.

“I have always just kind of been drawn to the kids who struggle with behavior,” she said.

Succeeding in the job means not taking students’ outbursts personally, Schmidgall said. That can be hard when a student is physically and verbally attacking her, but she’s learned over the years that students will match the emotional level of the adults around them. If she’s agitated and anxious, students will be too.

“You just have to understand that’s how they have learned to get their needs met,” she said.

Schmidgall’s staff of teaching assistants at the Behavior Intervention Center nominated her for a Crystal Apple award. It’s a rare honor for a first-year teacher, but Schmidgall has extensive experience in special education through multiple jobs and a clear aptitude for building rapport with students who struggle to trust anyone, they said.

“Nicole has accepted each child as an individual and helped them to start believing they can do it. This is everything,” they wrote. They cited her work creating a calming school environment, analyzing data to schedule student breaks and creating fun hand-on lessons that engage kids through projects like gardening and using balloons to explore kinetic energy.

“Nicole comes in every morning with a smile on her face ready for whatever the day brings,” they wrote.

Schmidgall started teaching at a private school before she had a teaching license, then moved to the Salem-Keizer School District to work one on one with special needs students. She later worked at Kennedy Elementary School helping students with high behavioral needs.

Soon after she was hired as a teacher, her supervisors selected her to open a new campus for the Behavior Intervention Center in the former Fruitland school building in east Salem.

She’s the sole teacher at Fruitland, working with five students in second to fifth grade. 

By the time they arrive in her classroom, Schmidgall said those students are used to everyone thinking of them as the problem kids. Often, they see themselves that way too. Because of disabilities, extreme trauma or dysfunction in other areas of their life, many have learned that aggression and other forms of acting out are the only way to get what they need.

Her goal is “helping them build the skills that they need to have successful relationships with peers and adults,” she said.

Schmidgall said she and her team rely on humor to get through days and support each other in helping students. All of them are worthy of a Crystal Apple, she said.

“It’s just really humbling because all of my staff are so amazing at their jobs,” she said. “I wouldn’t last 10 minutes without them.”

Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

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