Van Allen Elementary School principal prepares for retirement

MT. PLEASANT - What started as a post with the Peace Corp lead Don LeBlanc, Van Allen Elementary School's principal, into a 34 year career in education that took him from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia to Qatar and finally, to Mt. Pleasant.

'After Peace Corp, I worked for this organization called Africare and I was living in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. They had an American International School and I met the school director. He was from Iowa and he thought that I was a teacher and I asked ‘how did you get into teaching?' and he said ‘University of Northern Iowa has a teaching fair and I started it but it's happening next month,'” LeBlanc said of the interaction that got him started in his career.

Following the international teaching recruitment fair at UNI, LeBlanc's first interview was for a post in Ethiopia, his top choice.

'That was where I wanted to go so I was like ‘woah' and then I met my wife there. I guess it was meant to be. I was about 25,” he said.

LeBlanc, who has spent ten years with the Mt. Pleasant Community School District, notified the school board at their February meeting that he would be retiring at the end of the 2019-2020 school year.

The New Hampshire native spent the latter 26 years of his career as a principal at various schools around the world. The principal started as a second grade teacher and was hooked into education almost immediately.

'Once you start teaching, if you're really born to teach, you just love it. Once you develop that relationship with kids and you see that spark and build that relationship. It just grabs you like a magnet, you know that's what you want to do,” he said.

As he's taken on more of an administrative role, LeBlanc said many of the objectives are the same, only on a larger scope.

'As a teacher, you have a relationship with 20 to 26 students and they are your little family. You would do anything to help them learn, help them be successful. As a principal, now your core group is a little bigger but the goal still is the same. You want to make the school the best school possible for everybody - the kids, the teachers, the parents. You want to create something special for everybody,” he said.

As a principal, LeBlanc said the most challenging part of the job has been juggling constant change and also solving issues as they arise.

'You have a lot coming at you at once. It's hard to focus on either one. Honestly, you could be a principal 24/7 and still not feel like you're giving it your all,” he said.

But even when navigating the challenges, LeBlanc said the people that surround him have always made the experience worthwhile.

'I think it's always the people you work with. The relationship you have with the students, the teachers, the parents. There's nothing more rich than a parent-child relationship and it's fun to see kids grow and mature all the time,” he said.

As he reflects on his time at Mt. Pleasant specifically, LeBlanc said the district was special because it encouraged him to continue growing.

'I think you build up skills overtime and being here I was able to use some of those skills and also continue growing. This kept pushing me to keep growing and growing. As you get older, it can get harder. You have all this stuff you learned in the past and it doesn't get pushed out - it collides,” LeBlanc said.

'I feel privileged to have been part of this community because not every person gets to kiss a pig at a school carnival,” he added.