Along with the camel train of new teachers that has alighted on USD 257 this year and there are more than a dozen newbies a bright, driven, impassioned, first-time principal has recently taken the lead reins at Jefferson Elementary School.
Tiffany Koehn, who taught for five years at an elementary school in Cherryvale before earning the top gig in Iola, replaces former Jefferson principal Lori Maxwell.
If it were ever written in the stars that a young teacher would ascend in the early part of her career to the role of principal, it was a memo surely intended for Koehn (pronounced Cohen). But it wasnt fortune alone that smoothed Koehns path. Shes been rigorously prepping to be a principal from the time she felt the first vibrations of professional ambition. I knew when I was in high school that I wanted to be a principal, Koehn recalled. And while she was reluctant to confess her wish to just anyone, she felt confident opening up to her future husband, Mike, in the early days of their courtship. When I met him, Koehn said, he asked me what I was going to KU for. I said, Im going to school to be a teacher, but my goal is to become a principal.
At that point, Koehns goal became the couples goal. My husband has been a huge supporter of this, Koehn said. When I went back to get my masters, hes the one who said, You should do it now. He has really encouraged me to follow my dreams.
A Basehor native, Koehn graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in education the first in her family to graduate from a four-year university and received her masters in educational leadership from Pitt State.
But it wasnt simply naked careerism that landed the 27-year-old the top job at Jefferson. Koehn believes deeply in the assignment and finds value in the everyday labor of being a principal. As a classroom teacher, you make a huge impact on that particular group of kids, Koehn said, but as a principal you get to make an impact on the entire school the students, the teachers, the paras. Thats what I like.
There are character traits that all great principals share, said Koehn the ability to be flexible, a capacity for deep listening but there is one that undergirds all the others. More a doctrine of care than a trait perhaps, it is the moral aquifer from which any good school draws its primary sustenance. And its this, said Koehn: A principal should always keep the students best interests in mind. They come first, and they always will. All other decisions stem from that.
When not rocketing up the career ladder, Principal Koehn and her husband, a car salesman in Independence, like to travel. Theyve been to the Dominican Republic, Cancun. Not long ago the pair hiked the Grand Canyon alongside Koehns father. Koehn is also an avid half-marathoner but had to hang up her running shoes more than a year ago when a third Koehn Tyson, the couples first child arrived on the scene.
Koehn is a lifelong book lover and, in this respect, Tyson is very much his mothers son. He loves board books, said the bursting-with-pride new parent. Hell pick up a book and hell just flip the pages and hell babble like hes reading. Its amazing how if you model that behavior at a young age, they pick up on it. And what more essential quality could you ask for in a teacher or principal than that they comprehend the power of their example?
Reading was a gift that Koehns mother passed along to her. Its a gift Koehn is passing along to her son. Its also one of those rare gifts that doesnt disappear from your own hand when you give it to someone else. Koehn knows this, and she wants the students at Jefferson to be the beneficiaries of this gift, too, the beneficiaries of a complete and joyful and well-rounded education.
To this end, Koehn will begin the school year traveling the unaccustomed corridors of Jefferson Elementary, moving from one first- or second-grade classroom to the next, with a favorite picture book in hand. The book is about a principal at a school not unlike Jefferson. By the end of her in-house tour, Koehn will have read this book to every student in her charge. Shell know them, theyll know her.
So, is she excited about this new phase in her life, excited about finally landing on the perch shes held in her sights for so long?
Im very excited, Koehn said, beaming. It feels like everything has fallen into place.
