Ken Collins isn’t taking retirement any more lightly than he took his work with students.

“My goal in retirement is to rediscover the artist in me,” he said recently. 

That means taking piano lessons to revive a long-neglected interest in music. He wants to take music composition and French language classes at Chemeketa Community College. He also has an impressive garden to tend at the Keizer home he shares with wife, Sherry, who works for the state. 

At the same time, he still harbors a love of the theater, and plans to help out as a volunteer with Mcnary’s planned production of “Hello Dolly” next year. 

He might even take to the stage again sometime, but first he wants to explore those other artistic abilities that he says have been too long on hold. 

Collins taught at McNary for 30 years before retiring in June. 

“I guess I’m a creature of habit,” he joked. 

More seriously, he added “I really believe things happen for a reason, that people come into your life for a reason… 

“It was meant for me to be here.” 

A big factor in his tenure at McNary was the school and the community. 

Collins switched from teaching drama to fine arts a few years ago, leaving the theater program in the hands of Linda Baker. He lauds her work with the department, which has continued to do a major musical each year and has added challenging Shakespeare plays to the mix. 

“We have a mutual admiration society,” he said of his successor. 

Collins said that in theater and art classes alike, he has enjoyed seeing his students develop their talents as artists. He can count many success stories among McNary grads who have gone on to excel in graphic arts, operatic singing, ant TV and movies. 

But he also counts as successes the kids who survived rough starts to become responsible citizens. He remembers a troubled boy who, in a rage one day, threatened Collins with a pair of scissors and tore the classroom door off its hinges. 

Eight years later, he saw the same young man standing outside his doorway, staring in at him. There was no threat this time, however. Now married and a father, the former student had come back to apologize to Collins and to thank him for putting up with his behavior years before. 

Such difficult cases are not the norm, however. 

“I think we’ve got great kids here,” Collins said. 

McNary has had a couple of highly publicized fights in the past year, but Collins said student problems are really no greater at McNary than at any other school. In fact, he noted, substitute teachers who come to McNary claim “they’d rather work here than anywhere else.” 

The biggest challenge today for educators is not from the kids but from budget cuts, which lead to short supplies and crowded classrooms, he said. When he started teaching, arts classes had a ceiling of 24 students; today the same classes may have 37 or more kids enrolled, he said. 

Still Collins said he loved his years at McNary. 

“To be a teacher you really have to love what you do, and you have to love working with kids,” he said. “McNary does an incredible job with what it has.”

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