At NAHS, Jeremiah McCray wears many hats: he is class president, star track runner, future educator, brother, and student representative. But he wasn’t always so involved.

During the class of 2022’s graduation, McCray was playing his saxophone when he noticed that nobody looked like him. 

“I didn’t see any male black students up on that stage getting any awards for ranked top 10 or class president or vice president,” said McCray, “I was like, all the different ethnicities and cultures, why are we not seeing that representation up on that stage?” 

During his junior year, McCray challenged himself to step outside his comfort zone and get up on the stage to motivate others in the future. 

You may have heard other students calling him “Mr. Pres” in the hallways. Since he took the position during his junior year, McCray’s main goal has been to make sure that senior activities are affordable, so students in his graduating class can focus on everything else, like college or career readiness, during their senior year.

 “I just want to make sure everyone can afford to go to these special events and don’t have to worry about all these other things going on during your senior year. But at least you can enjoy it at the end,” said McCray. 

As class president, McCray enjoys the challenge of finding out what motivates students to attend and participate in fundraisers.

“It’s like a learning process,” he said. “You thought you knew your peers, but then you just gotta sort of dig a little deeper and find out what motivates them a little bit more.”

As a student representative at school board meetings throughout the year, McCray gets the chance to talk about the different activities taking place at NAHS.

“Students at our school get a bad rap,” McCray said. “You can turn on the television and see all the fights, and stuff like that, but there’s so much positivity that goes around in our school. There is so much academically and athletically that goes on, and our students don’t get enough recognition for what they do.”

As positive as his experience in Norristown has been, McCray sees a void in his education that he hopes to fill one day for others.

 “I never had a male black teacher [in all] of my 12 years of education,” he said. 

“Certain minorities and certain ethnicities can get overlooked because they don’t have an educator looking through their lens.”

 He’s always been great around kids and has found a passion for helping them. That’s when he decided to go to school for education to become a teacher. “Let me be that teacher for those young male black students in the future,” McCray said.

With his mindset of giving back to the community, he considered coming back and being a teacher at NAHS. A lot of great students are successful, leave, and don’t come back to Norristown because of the negative stigma surrounding it. 

 “Why not come back and show kids who are in high school now what your life can be like, what you can achieve?” said McCray.

Track has played a predominant role with McCray, it taught him discipline hard work, and consistency. He applies what he has learned in other activities.

“I think about how I can run, and like you get nervous before the race, I think about that, and it takes all the anxiety and nerves away I just use in different situations so it really helps me,” said McCray.

He was inspired by the performance of his brothers, Jonathan, winning Mr. Norristown in 2013, Simmian was runner-up in Mr. Norristown in 2016, and Tyler winning Mr. Norristown in 2018.

“I was in about like third grade when I watched my brother Jonathan’s. So, from that early age before I wanted to do anything in high school I was like ‘I wanna be Mr Norristown,”  said McCray.