Greeley West recently hired Mr. Aaron Allen to be the new assistant principal starting next year. Allen sat down for an interview so that staff and students could get to know him better.

Q: What are your first thoughts about West?
A: My first thought is that Greeley has a lot of pride. I am very impressed with the students. I got to see the music program, the orchestra, the jazz band, and choir. The students are very nice, the staff has been very welcoming to me, and it just seems like this is a great group of students that is very excited about school and are happy to come to school every day.

Q: Did you get to meet some students and teachers?
A: I met many teachers and they have all been wonderful. I got to see some classes and see what they are doing in their classes and they are doing a great job. I only have got to meet a couple students at this point but the students that I have met have been very nice and just seem very excited to be here and were very welcoming as well.

Q: What are your thoughts on things that can be improved?
A: At this point, since I’ve only been here for a couple of days, I don’t have enough information yet to decide how I can best support the school, but I’m excited to bring some of the ideas from my international school where we have the MYP and DP program.

Q: What is your background?
A: I started as a music teacher but after college I went to Japan and taught English for two years. After that, I came back to the states and I taught music for six years and then I became a school counselor where I was working at a district with the same kind of diversity of Greeley District 6. After that, I decided I wanted to take my family to China and I got a job at an international school there and I have been there for three years.

Q: What is it like coming from China to Greeley?
A: So it takes about twenty hours to get here from China and so I was exhausted for several days. One of the things that is nice is there is a bit of pollution in Beijing. Sometimes the air is beautiful there and sometimes it is not so nice, but compared to Greeley the air is always nice. Here, there is grass and water everywhere. In Beijing, there is a lot of cars, people, huge buildings. It is an extremely interesting culture and food. It was an amazing experience for me and my family. We got to travel that whole side of the world for about three years, but we’re very excited about coming back to the U.S. as well.

Q: What are some of the weirdest foods that you have tried that you never thought you would’ve tried if not living in China?
A: (Something) that I have tried is chicken feet. Those don’t taste very good, they are really boney, its just a lot of skin and they just don’t taste that great. My friends tricked me by offering me a brownie. It was a brownie that was in this like purple gel and I tried it and it didn’t taste very good. My friends said it was qualitative duck blood and so it was some kind of hardened duck blood. Just the other day with the staff we ate some duck tongue together, just to have a real Chinese experience and that’s just because the kids over there – they really do eat it. They bring it to school as a snack. It’s not bad, just weird that you’re eating some animal’s tongue.

Q: What is your favorite thing to do outside of school?
A: The most important thing is spending time and playing with my three kids: Layla, Daisy, and August. I also love climbing. So I love going to climbing gyms and when I can, I like to go to the mountains and go climbing. It is by far my favorite thing. Before I had kids I played a lot of guitars, I played in a lot of rock bands and we played all over Colorado Springs.