Kila School led by state's top principal

Renee Boisseau has a special place in her heart for middle-school students.

The Kila School principal has worked with students of all ages and abilities. She started her career as high school teacher. Her current school is home to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. She has worked with kids with special needs.

She is passionate about kids, period. But it's the not-quite-adolescents that Boisseau enjoys most.

"It's such an exciting time for kids," she said. "Every day is different for them, so every day in the classroom is different."

Boisseau is the middle school representative for the Montana Association of Elementary and Middle School Principals, a division of the School Administrators of Montana.

The group recently selected her as the middle-school-level recipient of the 2009 National Distinguished Principal Award for Montana.

"I was totally surprised," she said. "It was a great honor."

As the state's distinguished middle school principal, Boisseau will travel in October to Washington, D.C., where she and other state winners will be recognized for their work as school administrators.

"Everyone I've talked to who has done it says it's a life-changing experience," she said. "They make you feel valued and make you feel your job and what you do … is important."

Although Kila is a small, rural school - 154 students are enrolled this year - Boisseau and her teaching staff do what they can to create a middle school environment for their sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. They want students to be as prepared as possible when they enter Flathead High School as freshmen, Boisseau said.

"It's an effort to try and provide as much of the middle-school atmosphere as we can in a school where they're sharing a lunchroom with kindergarteners," she said.

Challenges include trying to teach lab skills in a school that lacks a science lab and holding an elective band class - with limited instruments - in the basement.

Despite the challenges, Boisseau loves working in rural schools. She has spent 21 of her more than 30-year education career in small schools.

Boisseau grew up and attended high school in Bellevue, Wash. She attended college at the University of Montana, and her first teaching job was at Sentinel High School in Missoula.

After a few years as a school secretary in Wyoming, Boisseau moved to the Flathead Valley. She taught special education at Smith Valley School for eight years. In 1997, she was hired as the principal of Kila School.

Being a rural school administrator isn't easy, she said.

"You're a little bit of everything. Sometimes you're the plumber. Sometimes you're the snow-shoveler," she said.

"It's challenging. Sometimes you're spread pretty thin."

She also is expected to manage staff and students and to be the school's instructional leader - a job Boisseau takes very seriously.

"I feel very strongly about the staff here and their knowledge of current best practices in teaching," she said.

Boisseau attends any conference she can to learn skills and techniques that will help teachers, according to district clerk Sharon Leach, who has worked with her for the last 10 years. Boisseau also is unafraid to lead by example.

"When I first started, I was very impressed with her. She was helping to read to a special-needs child, and she was so tender - and then a half hour later she had to do some discipline," Leach said. "It was impressive to see her make that switch."

That versatility is even more important for principals now than when she became an administrator 12 years ago, Boisseau said. The constantly changing nature of her job is one of the things she likes most about it.

"It's a lifelong learning experience as a career," she said. "In some careers, you learn a few new things, but you continue to do what you were originally trained for."

As a principal, she said, "you have to constantly be learning."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyin-terlake.com