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Janet Wood gets a group hug from students at Mountain Home Kindergarten. I


t may have all started when Janet Wood was six years old, running from the school bus stop to the worn dirt basketball court beside her house so she could beat her brothers and make the first basket. ❚ Her inner drive


to learn and succeed carried her through 38 years of various leadership roles at the Mountain Home School District, and at 62, she has embraced her newest role as kindergarten principal with characteristic gusto.


“I never saw myself as a kindergarten principal,” Wood said. “I absolutely love it. I love this age group. It’s the start of everything.” Wood, who has spent the majority of


her career in school athletics, intended to be kindergarten principal for only one year to fill a district need. This fall finds her in her second year as principal, and although she is starting her 40th year in education, she has no immediate plans to retire.


“I just love to learn,” Wood said. “I love this job. I don’t even see it as a job.”


Team player Wood came to the Mountain Home


School District in 1981 as an eighth-grade grade science teacher and girls’ basket- ball coach, after first working two years in the Cotter School District. She then coached Mountain Home High School girls’ basketball for 14 years, was junior high assistant principal for 5 years, and was the district’s athletic director for 11 years. For the majority of those years, she was the only full-time female athletic di- rector in the state, she said. Being female was never a roadblock,


10 ❚ SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 ❚ LIVING WELL


although she sometimes felt she had to make sure her strong opinions didn’t come across the wrong way to others. “I grew up in a man’s world,” Wood


says of her circle of playmates. They would catch fish, skin and cook them over a fire. “I was the only girl. I didn’t think about it at the time.” That attitude continued into her ath-


letic-directing days, and she laughs when she recounts how former high school football coach Shane Patrick told her he was asked by another coach what it felt like to be working for a woman. “I don’t ever think anything of it,” he


responded. “She’s just like one of the guys.”


Her coach-like and team-player atti- tude continues even at the kindergar- ten. She’s worked to identify her own weaknesses, sought to improve herself and is quick to praise others around her who work to organize the school and help the students. “She is the ultimate team player,” said Mountain Home Public School Superin-


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