A few surprises have come my way over the course of my time as a teacher and administrator.<\/p>\n
This is my 22nd<\/sup> year at ACS. For the first 9 years I was an assistant principal or vice principal, and for the past 13 years I have been the middle school principal. Before coming to ACS, I was a teacher at Surrey Christian School for 8 years. In my time as a teacher and administrator at both schools, a few things happened that I did not think would ever be part of my job description.<\/p>\n Back when I was at Surrey Christian School, I was part of a few staff entries into an annual \u201cairband\u201d competition.<\/p>\n One year, I constructed a zipline that ran diagonally across the gym. I borrowed a student\u2019s electric guitar and was all set to swoop down on the zipline to the stage for a great performance of \u201cThe Final Countdown.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the guitar strap separated, and the electric guitar dropped about 15 feet onto the gym floor.<\/strong><\/span> The show must go on and Mr. van der Leek (who was also teaching at Surrey at that time) grabbed the broken guitar and handed it to me once I had gone down the zipline to the stage. The neck of the guitar was broken and I had to replace the instrument, but it certainly was a memorable performance!<\/p>\n There were a few other notable airband performances, but I will leave the telling of those to Mrs. Barthel, as she was also a participant in each of them.<\/p>\n When I was at the Heritage campus of ACS in one of my first years, some of us on staff were feeling a little bummed because our campus was the oldest in the system which also meant we had older furniture in our building.<\/p>\n Another teacher and I decided we would play furniture movers and \u201cborrow\u201d the nice new couches from the Clayburn Hills campus staff room. Little did we realize how upset some of the staff from the Clayburn campus would get! <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We were also informed that we better not try anything similar with the secondary staff room because Gary Verbeek would definitely \u201cone-up\u201d us, and no one wanted to get into a battle of pranks with Gary.<\/p>\n Then there was the time a beaver moved into the swampy area to the north of the Heritage campus playing field and built a very large dam across a stream. The field was completely flooded.<\/p>\n Our head of facilities and I had to canoe across the field to get to the beaver dam. Wearing hip waders, we jumped in<\/strong><\/span> and used shovels and an axe to break up the dam. We did this every day for a week because the beaver kept repairing the dam overnight. Finally, the city trapped the offending master engineer and relocated it.<\/p>\n I remember the year we restructured and the middle school was built. That was the fall of the Norwalk virus. Students (and some staff) became violently ill without warning. We did a lot of cleaning that year\u2014just saying!<\/p>\n The past few years have been difficult; leading a school through a pandemic and a massive construction project hasn\u2019t been easy. School leadership has worked through many of the breaks in the school year as restrictions and protocols continually change.<\/p>\n All this brings me to the point of this blog.<\/p>\n It has been a trying couple of years. I had asked for and was granted a four month leave of absence that was to begin after spring break in March.<\/p>\n However, plans have changed. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Instead of going on a leave, I will be starting in a new role here at ACS. I will be taking on a new position as Director of Operations. Basically, I will be responsible for overseeing the physical plant of all three campuses. This will include facilities, info tech, custodial, and busing. This is a major shift for both me and the school. In discussions with our Executive Director, Julius Siebenga, and my family, we felt that this is God\u2019s timing. I am very grateful for the prayerful conversations I had about this with my family and with Julius.<\/p>\n As of spring break, the plans for coverage of my current role will proceed as we had planned when I was granted a leave of absence. Sandra Barthel will be interim principal and John van der Leek will be supporting her as the vice principal.<\/p>\n This has not been an easy decision. However, after much prayer and discussion, this is a good move for me personally. It is my hope and prayer that this is a good move for our school as I bring my administrative experience to my new role. Additionally, if you noticed a theme in the little stories above, I have some experience with some of the areas of my new position!<\/p>\n God is good!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few surprises have come my way over the course of my time as a teacher and administrator. This is my 22nd year at ACS. For the first 9 years I was an assistant principal or vice principal, and for the past 13 years I have been the middle school principal. Before coming to ACS, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":6007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-6001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6001"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=6001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Swooping Oops<\/h2>\n
Just \u201cBorrowing\u201d<\/h2>\n
Battling With A Beaver<\/h2>\n
Shifting Roles<\/h2>\n