There is no place like home for new Ten Sleep principal

TEN SLEEP – When Levi Collins, who was working as the interim assistant principal in Ogden, Utah, learned that he was hired to be the new principal for Ten Sleep School he and his wife Savanah were excited about coming home and getting back to their roots.

Collins and his wife were born and raised in Wyoming and wanted to return back to their roots after spending a period of time away from everything they knew and loved to strengthen their relationship.

"I was born and raised in Wyoming [Lovell] and I've always had fierce Wyoming pride. I love Wyoming and my wife and I when we got married, our idea was to get each of us away from both of our families to where we had to rely on each other and build our relationship together. But in the end we decided that Utah was not for us, we didn't enjoy it very much, we both missed Wyoming and wanted to come back to Wyoming," Collins said.

"We wanted our kids to be raised in a small town and we wanted our kids to be able to have a small community and the same experiences my wife and I had when we grew up. We were judging that it wasn't really possible if you are in an area like Ogden because you just don't have the same experiences, the same lifestyles and the same type of people and the ability to do the same things. We are both pretty outdoorsy. I grew up training horses and riding horses and I really enjoy that lifestyle, riding motorcycles, hunting, fishing and that freedom is something I wanted for my kids and my wife had a similar background as well growing up and we didn't have the opportunity to do anything like that in Ogden," Collins added.

Collins comes to Ten Sleep with experience and considerable education. He earned his bachelor's degree of biology at the University of Wyoming. After a couple different teaching jobs in Colorado and Wyoming, Collins was hired on as a science teacher and athletic director in Ogden, Utah. While at Ogden, Collins took the Ogden School District leadership training courses and was also working on his master's in educational leadership.

Two major goals that Collins has for Ten Sleep is increasing student achievement and preparation for the future.

"I think always the No.1 goal should be to not only maintain but to increase student achievement. One good thing about Ten Sleep, Ten Sleep already has pretty high student achievement. I want to obviously increase it. I want to make sure there is a steady increase and that we are consistently preparing our kids for the jobs that are going to be here in the future. I think a lot of times in education we look and we are preparing kids for jobs, maybe in the 90s or the 80s just because that's what we did growing up. We need to prepare kids for jobs of the future and it's a lot different, the landscape of the job availability is a lot different now, than what it used to be even 10 years ago, it's vastly changed," Collins said.

So far Ten Sleep has been everything Collins and his wife have dreamed.

"Ten Sleep has been amazing. My wife and I have had such a great time here. The community has been so supportive. So many people have come over and introduced themselves, made meals for us, the community has just been amazing. They have made us feel like we are already part of the community, already part of the family and I couldn't ask for anything better. My wife and I are extremely happy with how well we have been treated since we've been here," Collins said.