After serving eight years as Northwestern Lehigh High School Assistant Principal, Don Allen is retiring.

Battling health issues for years, Allen said it was time to sacrifice his work for his health.

“I have a lot of uncertainty about my future but my wife completely understood that I wanted to get out while I was doing the job well,” Allen said. “I wanted to get out while I was still making a great contribution.

“Due to several degenerative conditions, I’ve decided to concentrate on my health.

“I’ve been in constant pain for decades and exercise is the only thing that really works.”

Pain has increasingly become Allen’s reality.

“I’ve had issues with my back and really bad stenosis for about 14 years,” Allen said. “I’ve had horrible fatigue in my legs, including weakness and numbness.”

The coronavirus pandemic has complicated his departure.

“I emailed this year’s sophomores, juniors and seniors and said I wished I could say goodbye in person,” Allen said. “I would have liked to say goodbye to everybody.”

Allen has nothing but praise for the high school.

“I’m thankful for the opportunity to work at Northwestern and all the support of the families,” he said. “It was wonderful and I’m going to miss them.

“I really am going to miss the faculty and the kids a lot.”

Allen said it may be a difficult task trying to convince somebody to become a school administrator.

“But the district will get somebody fantastic because it’s no secret, Northwestern is a great school,” Allen said. “I tell everyone who will listen how wonderful the kids at Northwestern are.

“The skills and work ethic are top notch. Even if the kids weren’t skilled at academics, chances are they were getting top honors at vo-tech.

“It was a great experience, really phenomenal. I never saw a faculty that strong.

“At the high school, they were top notch. I think it was the culture.

“I think because the kids were serious, the teachers were serious about providing their students with challenges and taking it to a different level.”

Allen cited the requirements every student had to meet as contributing to this climate.

“I worked in schools where the level of civilization was a lot more chaotic,” he said. “You’ve got to hold kids accountable 100 percent of the time but that’s only half of it.

“Chances are they don’t take the time to see there’s an upside for them.”

Allen helped students identify what they wanted.

“[Then] I dealt with a lot less repetitive behavior.”

Allen considered building relationships a priority.

“One of the things about being in a small school is I could monitor the lunches and talk to students,” Allen said. “Just having the one-on-one conversations in the cafeteria probably saved a lot of time.

“I got to build the relationship with the kids and tried to find win-win situations instead of talking about consequences.”

In his role as assistant principal, Allen saw vaping and attendance as two recurring challenges.

“Kids were coming up at middle school age who said they couldn’t get through the day without vaping.”

The addition of a police department was a critical change, according to Allen.

“They got the right officers in there who really made the connection with kids,” Allen said. “The kids felt they were being protected.

“[The officers were] entire extensions of myself. It was really great to work with the officers. Every officer there was 100 percent on board with being there for the kids.”

The pandemic has been an added burden this year.

“Almost all of the administrative team have most of their vacation days unused,” Allen said. “We’ve been continually working with a plan to finish this school year and planning for the future.

“I’ve got to hand it to the administrative team. “They’ve been going around the clock.”

Allen had various work experiences before coming to Northwestern.

“I was lucky,” he said. “I grew up in south Jersey but spent most of my school years in the Lehigh Valley.

“My dad was a civilian contractor for the military, so we moved all around, Hawaii, Oklahoma, all over. He ended up working at PPL, so I went to Salisbury.”

After a short stint at Penn State, Allen started a remodeling business doing historic restorations on buildings and federal farmhouses.

“I went back to college at the urging of my sister,” Allen said, who completed his undergraduate work at Kutztown University.

After graduation, Allen went into education.

“I loved it. I worked at Glenn Mills Schools, a school for remanded kids in Delaware County, for a few years,” Allen said. “Then I came up here and was a treatment supervisor at KidsPeace.

“I helped create an alternative ed program for Bethlehem Area Vo-tech.

“Students would attend from 2 in the afternoon until 10 at night, which got them off the street.

I was the social studies teacher.”

“There were four academic and two vocational teachers working with kids who had challenges.

“Their behavior got in their way but I loved it. I always like to help.”

Allen also worked as a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Salisbury.

“I taught U.S. history and government for 11 years,” he said. “I was pretty much doing the job of an assistant principal and teaching at the same time, so at the urging of some teachers I really respected, I got into administration.”

That’s when he enrolled at Wilkes University.

Before coming to Northwestern, Allen served as assistant principal for five years at Northern Lehigh, alongside of Northwestern’s principal, Aileen Yadush.

“At Northern Lehigh, there were lot more discipline issues. That was the greatest need,” he explained. “At Northern Lehigh, the kids had a larger problem, problems at home,” he explained. “School work wasn’t their top priority.”

When he moved to Northwestern, Allen said he mainly focused on “discipline and attendance, and helping departments with curriculum while supervising and assisting teachers in building a tool bag with strategies.”

Allen enjoyed the work.

“I loved it. There was a lot of community support,” he said. “And, it gave me a chance to be an education leader every bit as much as being a disciplinarian and a manager. The kids were phenomenal.

“It didn’t matter how serious the behavior was. I think they knew there was a level of respect for each other and I think they knew it.

“They might not see eye to eye on circumstances but there’s a genuine respect and concern there. They liked each other.

“Now my plan is singular, to focus on my health.”