Principal’s 21-Year Stint Comes to an End
By Sophie Speer
After 21 years, Liberton Christian School principal Nel van’t Wout is retiring - but is not leaving the school community completely.
Miss van’t Wout (64) has been the school’s principal since 1985, when the school was only three years old.
She has become an integral part of Liberton Christian School, seeing it through times of hardship as well as success.
Miss van’t Wout said the school had just 23 children and two classrooms when she started.
She planned to be at Liberton Christian School for just one year, but this time kept being extended due to her love of the school and its community spirit.
“The way it was a community then is still so much going on, with families helping out and older children helping out the younger ones,” she said. “We foster that here.”
Board of trustees member Bill Lee said Miss van’t Wout had taken the school through a time of significant change.
Miss van’t Wout had overseen the school’s integration, an increase from two teachers to four, and the building of a third classroom and office facilities.
“I spent a year teaching in the school hall. That was not the most pleasant experience, but we made the best of it,” she said.
For years, Miss van’t Wout did not have a secretary and, as well as with working full-time as a teacher and performing her other responsibilities as principal, she also helped clean and acted as caretaker for the school on a voluntary basis.
“We had a telephone in my classroom and the children knew how to answer it.”
A small resource room doubled as the staff room and her office for years before extensions were built.
Miss van’t Wout said although a lack of resources and money had always been a challenge, she never let it get the better of her.
“We have such great staff here. The teachers work so hard, and all the families of the pupils help out wherever they can,” she said.
It was important for Miss van’t Wout to instil a view of the world as Christian to her pupils, as well as a desire to serve others and God.
Mr Lee said she had worked “extremely hard” for the school.
“She placed a high value on the individual developing their own skills,” he said.
Miss van’t Wout said it seemed “unreal” to be leaving.
“My life is so knitted together with the life of the school.”
Miss van’t Wout intends to have a well-deserved rest, travelling overseas before returning to volunteer at the school, and is thinking about writing her memoirs, as well as a history of the school.
Fiona Sizemore will be acting principal until the end of the year.
The Star, June 29, 2006
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