Principal Joan Crowl Nears Finish Line of Education Career

Joan Crowl’s first teaching job was in a first grade classroom at Council Bluffs St. Albert Catholic School.
Three decades later, Crowl hasn’t strayed far from the classroom or a passion for helping mold young learners in primary education.

As the principal at Northeast Elementary, Crown has spearheaded the school’s transition in its Early Learning Center and turned the preschool through second grade building into one of the finest in southwest Iowa.
Crowl announced Jan. 11 she would be retiring at the end of the year school year.

“I have reached the magical ‘rule of 88,” Crowl said.

The Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System (IPERS), the retirement plan for Iowa’s public employees, including teachers and educators, offers a “Rule of 88” plan to anyone vested in the retirement system.  The plan means any state employee whose age plus years of service equals 88 are eligible for full retirement benefits even if they are under age 65.

“I knew this was coming. It was just a matter of doing it,” she said of filing her retirement papers earlier this month.
That never made the decision to leave the post she has held since 2008 any easier.

“It was not easy,” she said. “I cried when I wrote my letter (of resignation) and I cried when I told my staff,” she said.

“It’s a bittersweet type of thing. You’re happy you’ve made it this far with good health and you hope you’ve had a good track record and contributed to the best of your ability. But leaving the people and the kids and my administrative colleagues is hard.”

Walking into her classroom way back when was easier.  Crowl admits she was just a bright-eyed kid in 1983 when she took over her first classroom at St. Albert. But she loved every minute of it.

“Teaching first grade was my favorite grade,” she said. “It’s when students first learn how to read and read fluently and get excited and having a book in their hands in something they can do independently and they don’t have to wait on someone else to read to them.”

After six years teaching first grade, Crowl went on to serve as a TAG teacher for grades first through sixth and then as a principal at a trio of elementary schools in the Council Bluffs School District.

Even then it was tough to leave the classroom for administration, where she’d spend the next two decades.

“I was a teacher for nine years and it was really good,” Crowl said. “Teaching one grade level and then a bunch of grades for TAG gave me, I think, a varied experience with students academically and behaviorally at all levels. It was a great experience when I became a principal.”

After serving as an administrator in Council Bluffs, heading up the district’s pre-school and Title I reading programs, she joined the Area Education Agency where she served as the Director of Curriculum Instruction and Assessment for seven years. The last three years with the AEA she spent in the Glenwood office.

While she enjoyed her run in district and AEA administration – the broad big picture work of education – the classroom and the kids, tugged at her. She knew she had to get back into a school.

“I very much missed being with the kids. That is my passion. That is why I jumped at the chance to come to Northeast,” she said.

One of the big drawing points of Northeast, she said, was the prospect of the early childhood center moving to Northeast. The program caters to pre-school age children in a structured classroom environment. The former pre-school program moved into Northeast from the Glenwood Resource Center campus shortly after Crowl’s arrival at the school.

“I wanted to be back with the children but in the primary center,” she said. “I believe very firmly in having early childhood and children all together in one facility. It was a huge reason (for getting me here). Developmentally they (early childhood programs) are so different than in a K-6 school. The whole culture and atmosphere and beliefs here are different for young children so you love it that we’re able to do that here.”

Crowl is exactly the kind of “boots on the ground” school leader who’d let her staff duct tape her to a wall in the gymnasium to challenge her students. Point proven when the staff did just that after the students met their pledge goal in  that year’s Jump Rope for Heart Challenge.

“They exceeded it,” she said.

Crowl said her favorite moments at Northeast are those ones with students, and yes, whether it’s a silly, embarrassing challenge involving duct tape or simply encouraging young learners to take an interest in reading.

“I am most happy when I am in classrooms with the kids,” she said. “I much prefer that over any meetings. That’s the great thing about working here at a primary center like we have; you wake up in a bad mood or have a bad day or a bad meeting or phone call and all you have to do is walk down to a classroom and get absorbed in the excitement of learning. Or see the kids read or help them read. It totally turns your day around.

She knows her last day – June 30 – won’t be an easy one. “I’ll feel very torn and probably very sad,” she said of that date. She plans to travel and help care for elderly parents in her new found free time. But she plans to stay busy. She hasn’t ruled out working in education again some day.

“I guess that’s where my experiences and talents are but I have no idea what I’ll do at this point,” she said. “Whatever I do right away, it will be very small and part time and very flexible so I can travel and volunteer and be a caretaker for our elderly parents. Those three things are my priority right now.”