In a setting that recreates the variety of ages, grades and activity of a one-room schoolhouse, students at Whidbey Christian School study and go about their academic tasks.

Walking between the student’s desks and stopping to chat with them one-at-a-time, Dan Nickolatas, the school’s future principal and head teacher, observes the student’s work as he familiarizes himself with each of them.

This is Nickolatas’s first visit to the school. He will take over in the Fall of 2005 and replace the current principal and head teacher, Anita Reed, who has filled the position for the past 12 years.

Reed said she is glad Nickolatas was able to visit the school before taking over. She said in all her 35 years of teaching, she never visited a school before taking over, but doing so relieves a great deal of tension and anxiety all around.

“The kids loved him,” Reed said. “I’m sure that it’s going to work out real good.”

School Board Chair Dorothy Cantrell said the school, which started in 1978 at Oak Harbor Seventh Day Adventist Church, is a structured 1-8th grade private school.

Reed said the school is structured, but allows for more of the casual comfort and flexibility of homeschooling, meaning students are able to seek the one-on-one help they need, whenever they need it.

Nickolatas said it is this type of small school environment where he thinks children learn the best.

Nickolatas said he worked for nine years in a small school in Oregon and 13 years in a similar school in Walla Walla and is currently teaching in a school in Sequim.

He said he has taught grades one through nine, and sometimes all at once.

“I really like the small schools because it is a family oriented type of education,” he said.

Nickolatas said he doesn’t feel children are forced to deal with as much peer pressure in small school environments and can therefore apply themselves, their energy and heart toward becoming successful and achieving their goals.

“The main thing that I remember in my own education was that I was only a number,” he said. “It didn’t really matter who I was.”

He said while growing up, he felt the educational system’s only interests were in what they taught and not who they taught.

“No one was very concerned that I would be successful,” he said. “But here, we are very concerned that the students be successful.”

Nickolatas said it was homeschooling his own four children that first got him interested in teaching. Then, as his own kids grew up and he started hearing about other parents’ desires for their children to receive quality educations, he knew how he wanted to help.

“As I got involved in other families and their needs, I found my life’s work,” he said.

Now, 22 years later, Nickolatas finds himself moving to Oak Harbor to take over one of its small private schools.

Nickolatas said he has high expectations for Whidbey Island and that he and his wife are looking forward to moving here in a few months.