Alan Robbins is eager to work with Bigfork High School staff and students

Alan Robbins sat behind an empty desk in his new office at Bigfork High School.

The hallways were quiet, lockers hung open and rugs were rolled up for easy cleaning. Summer had started, and Robbins was using the time to get the lay of the land at his new school.

Robbins was hired as the new Bigfork High School principal in May. He worked as the principal at University High School in Spokane from 2012 until he took the job in Bigfork. Spokane was his first job outside of Montana, and he decided Montana is where he’d rather be.

He was born and raised in Conrad, Mont., and attended Montana State University in Bozeman for electrical engineering.

After five years in the engineering field, Robbins realized it might not be the right career for him. He had been working with a local high school physics teacher to help give career guidance to teens, and enjoyed working with youth.

Then one day he came into work and learned the project he had been working on was cancelled.

He thought about what he really wanted to do, what was best for his family, and how he could make an impact.

“I thought, I really do want to work with people, rather than things,” he said.

He returned to MSU and got his teaching certificate in math and physics. He taught for 11 years, 10 of those at Manhattan High School.

“My favorite job I ever had was being a teacher,” he said. But he decided he wanted to have an impact on a system level and got his administrative credentials in 2005.

He served as a principal at Eureka High School and Columbia Falls High School, before working in Spokane.

In Spokane Robbins and his wife found they missed their family and the Flathead Valley, and began looking for ways to return. When he arrived for his interview in Bigfork Robbins said he knew this was where he wanted to be.

He’s excited to get to know the staff, students and community and thinks Bigfork High School has some great things going for it.

“Bigfork High School probably has more access to technology than any school I’ve been at,” he said. And he thinks the strength of Bigfork’s extracurricular activities, and the involvement from the community. speak well for the school, and he appreciates its smaller size.

“It’s the size of school I really enjoy,” he said.

While he loved teaching, he also enjoys many aspects of administration, and has found his engineering background to be an asset, as it allows him to look at the whole picture.

He initially pursued engineering because he loved learning, and said he’s still learning constantly. As new tools are developed to facilitate learning, you have to adapt and change. But he said the core of educating never changes.

“That core is pretty constant,” he said. But there are new tools being developed to facilitate learning.

Plus every year is different.

“Every year you get that new set of students,” he said. “That's a unique set of students.”

Though he loved teaching, Robbins finds that as an administrator the relationship his has with teachers is, in some ways, similar to that of a teacher and student.

“I love working with teachers in learning. In many ways I'm still a teacher.”