Oakview Middle School Associate Principal Mike Stanek will say goodbye to Lake Orion Schools this June after over 32 years of service.
Stanek, a Lapeer resident, began his teaching career in 1970 at the old junior high in Lake Orion after graduating from Central Michigan University, where he originally planned to go into dentistry.
“In your third year (of college) you need to decide where you’re headed, and for some reason I was heading towards dentistry,” he remembered. “Then I took an education class…I liked it and it became a fun thing for me.
I liked the professor…some teachers just get that hook,” he said.
Stanek taught science to all three grades at the junior high before moving to Junior High West, now Waldon Middle School, in 1973. Stanek said he was there for a number of years before going back to the other junior high.
“Then I was at the high school for a while, they were short a biology/chemistry teacher and I do both so I helped them out a bit,” said Stanek. “Then I was assistant principal at Scripps before I came to Oakview.”
Stanek has been the associate principal, working with Oakview Principal Alice Seppanen, since the school opened in 2002. He decided to retire after this school year after being given an incentive offer from the district.
“I’d planned on working one more year,” he said. “But there was an incentive offer that made it sound pretty good.”
Stanek, a Haslett, Michigan (a suburb of East Lansing) native, said he can still remember the first time he laid eyes on Lake Orion.
“One of my professors, because I graduated mid-year, said there were some job openings…I’d never been (to Lake Orion), I had no idea what it was like,” he said.
“Everything was trees and hills and no development at all,” he remembered. “Then I came down M-24…I lived in Oxford a few years, then I moved to Lapeer.”
Stanek said he had a great student teaching experience in Clarenceville, near Novi, and hasn’t stopped enjoying his profession since.
“I guess you never stop teaching,” he said. “I had a lot of neat experiences when I was teaching…there were more opportunities to develop your own way of teaching. It gave all of us a chance to branch out.”
Stanek said he has always loved working with children.
“We have a great crop of kids here at Oakview” he said. “I was very excited to come here…It was the same excitement we had when the Junior High West opened.”
Stanek and his wife Diane have two sons, 28 and 24, who are going into medicine and computers. He said he is looking forward to having more time to spend with his family.
“I want to sell boats,” he said. “I love to be around people, and I’m an avid fisherman.
“This is really a job that takes a lot of time…I am here from 6:15 a.m. until 8 or 10 p.m. That’s not typical but it does happen,” he said. “The first month (of retirement) will be consumed with trying to get out of gear.
“This is an incredible school, with an unbelievable staff,” Stanek continued. “It’s a close staff…we will be having a golf outing in another week.”