Frank Lenning is a passionate math teacher and is dedicated to teaching kids to the best of his ability. Anyone looking for proof of this claim needn't look any farther than the teacher's parking area in the school lot, where you will see Frank's van parked at nearly any hour of the day or night. Frank's long hours are a product of his class prep work and availability for tutoring math help. My conversations with our new math teacher quickly turned to teaching and often returned to the subject, which Frank says is his major focus of his life right now. However, his career didn't start in education. He originally worked in forest management and land surveying.
He was born in Idaho Falls, where his father was stationed for part of his Naval career. Throughout his growing up years, Frank moved around until his father retired and took a job in Northern Indiana. He graduated from High School in Crown Point, not too far from Gary, Indiana. He recalls his high school career, including playing the cello in the school orchestra and being voted "Most Spirited Senior" by his classmates. He went on to study forestry with a focus in biometrics at the Michigan School of Technology. In addition to the Forestry courses, Mr. Lanning took quite a few advanced math and science courses.
He went on to study forestry in graduate school in Flagstaff, Arizona; but dropped out when the weight of research, working night shifts, and classes became too much to carry. From there, Frank went into forest management and worked in that field until conservation efforts focused on protecting the spotted owl ended most forest management work in the surrounding area. He worked in land surveying for the next few years and got very involved in the FourSquare Church, where he taught Sunday school and was baptized. Frank is very serious about his faith still today.
Eventually, he returned to Wisconsin and completed coursework to receive a teaching certificate. During his studies, he substitute taught and worked in forestry again. After finishing his degree, he taught in Wisconsin, the Florida Keys, Montana (including West Yellowstone), and Idaho. He was happy living and working there for a number of years before leaving the area to attend to family concerns in Arizona. About that time, he began to experience significant health concerns, eventually culminating in discovering he was in stage 5 kidney failure. Frank underwent dialysis treatments in Wisconsin, which left him constantly exhausted and forced him out of teaching, apart from one AP Calculus class at the school he had been working for. Mr. Lenning began to worry that his career was over. He
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attributes his return to work to the power of prayer and God's intervening on his behalf. He told his doctor that he would be a miracle patient and would be off dialysis. Over the coming months, Frank slowly decreased the frequency of his treatments until he was able to discontinue them altogether. He was downgraded from stage 5 to stage 4 kidney failure. After 5 months of looking for a job teaching in a Christian school, Frank applied at Big Sandy and came to our town to teach. He has worked long hours doing prep and offering hours for students to get help with their class work.
Mr. Lenning enjoys chess, board games, and cards. He enjoyed cycling and other outdoor activities before his health concerns limited those options. He laughed when he explained that he doesn't have a lot of time for leisure activities due to the hours he puts into his work. When he eventually retires, he hopes to work at Disney World in the colder months of the year.
