When Jason Petlak moved to Oxbow in January 1991, he thought he would be in the community for a couple of years, and then he’d move on.
He never imagined he would still be in the town three decades later.
“I enjoyed the community and I enjoyed the school and enjoy the staff and students,” he said. “Time just goes quick. I can remember things from the very first day I walked into the building.”
“That’s the one thing about education – the students, the staff and the community can really have a bearing on where you’re at, because it really has an impact on decisions to move and those types of things,” he added later.
Petlak, who is originally from the east-central village of Goodeve, has announced that he is retiring at the end of the 2020-21 school year, bringing an end to a lengthy career as an educator, spent entirely in Oxbow.
“It’s always a difficult decision, but after 30 years, you’ve done what you wanted to do in the educational field, and there’s some other things in life that come up. You want to enjoy retirement while a person can, and I think that’s something with COVID that has popped up, is … the time that you spend with your family … becomes quite important,” he told the Observer.
His career started as a Grade 9 teacher at the former Oxbow Prairie Heights School. In the fall of 1997, he became the school’s principal.
When the town’s elementary and high schools were merged into one facility, Oxbow Prairie Horizons, in 2011, Petlak became the first principal.
“There was always a new challenge that was right within Oxbow that presented itself,” said Petlak, who has a hard time believing it’s been nearly 10 years since Prairie Horizons School opened.
The building still looks brand new, he said.
Technology has come a long ways, changing what they’re able to offer students. Vice-principal Mark Kosior is offering a robotics class.
“When I first move here, our computer lab had a Tandy 1000 with five and a half-inch floppy disks, with no hard drive space, and we were still using registers to do daily attendance.”
He noted there are three former students on staff, including Kosior.
“It makes you feel good that people are going into the education field and going into administration, and it makes you feel good that they also want to come back and teach in the community they grow up in and went to school in,” he said.
Not only has he taught the children of former students, he’s now seen grandchildren of former students in Prairie Horizons.
There was some thought to sticking around for one more year, due to the uncertainty caused by the ongoing pandemic, but he believes this feels like the right time to move onto something new.
“Teaching very much is not a job, it’s a lifestyle, and one’s identity is wrapped into the whole concept of being a teacher, so it’s never easy to walk away from that, but I wanted to have the opportunity to try different things,” said Petlak.
Petlak is looking forward to spending time with family. He knows of a lot of people who go into substitute teaching upon retiring, but it’s not something he plans to do at this time.
He has a home in Goodeve, and so will likely relocate there and spent more time with family in that area.
