For the last 21 years, Tennessee transplant Ronnie Manis has been an educator or administrator in the Marshalltown Community School District. On June 30, he will retire as principal of Anson Elementary School.

From Rogersville, Tenn originally, Manis graduated from Cherokee High School and enrolled at Tennessee Tech University. He set his sights on music education, but life took a different turn.

“Music and arts jobs weren’t really there, so I started looking at elementary education, because through my music courses, I’d had some really good experiences with elementary kids, and I just really thought that was where I wanted to go,” he said of the switch.

He earned his degree in elementary education then got a job teaching seventh and eighth grade and coaching basketball. He married Judy Fiscus on June 16, 2001. Manis ended up teaching in Tennessee for 10 years, with the family living in Murfreesboro, a city in the Nashville metropolitan area. In 2004, when daughter Emily was about a year and a half old, the couple discussed relocating.

“It was just growing, just exponentially. (Murfreesboro) had five high schools, each (with) almost 2,000 students,” he recalled. “We wanted to raise her in a smaller area so we ended up moving back to (Judy’s) hometown — Marshalltown — and that was great for my daughter. The diversity is one of the best things that could have ever happened to my daughter.”

Manis did long-term subbing at Miller Middle School for a year then was hired as a fifth grade teacher at Anson. He then spent three years at Miller as the librarian (and earned a certification in K12 library from UNI). The district began looking at ways of expanding technology, and Manis was part of that process.

“The associate superintendent at the time, Lisa Beames, somehow she and I met and I ended up doing a lot of the tech stuff, and I ended up moving to the Central Office for three years, as the technology education integration specialist,” he said. “And during that time, I got to be in more of a leadership role.”

He earned a graduate’s degree from Drake in administration in 2012.

The late Bea Niblock served as a mentor, and was the person who’d hired Manis to teach.

“I learned a lot from her, so when she retired (as Anson principal in 2013) I talked to her about the job and got her blessing for it. It was kind of a natural evolution of where I was in my career,” he said.

He assumed the role as principal of Anson Elementary School, work that requires a person to be a “jack of all trades.” He credits his school’s counselor Ashley Chyma with helping to make his job easier.

“It becomes overwhelming sometimes, but when you’re surrounded by the people that I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by, it takes a little bit of that pressure off when they’re able to help you with a lot of those things,” he said.

Like many educators, he said there were challenges with distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think we’re still in that recovery mode. Here we are five years later, our kids are still recovering from missing that year, but every year we see more and more progress,” he said.

Manis experienced a medical emergency in March, missing nine weeks of school. The incident helped him decide it was time to retire.

“Life’s short, and you need to look at other opportunities if you’ve got them, and enjoy life,” he said.

In retirement, Manis will be doing some part-time student teaching supervising at UNI.

“It’ll be fun (and) very different supervising future teachers at their different schools, but it’s a nice way for me to keep my hand in education,” he said.

Emily has followed in her father’s footsteps and will begin teaching preschool at Hoglan Elementary School in the fall. She taught preschool at Fisher last semester.

“I never heard her talk about wanting to do anything else,” he said. “I think it’s kind of cool that as I leave the district, another Manis comes in.”