Beloved teacher says goodbye to Ronan High

For Ronan High School teacher and coach Al Onsager, 35 years of teaching was not enough.

A former history and English teacher who also coached wrestling and football, Onsager retired from the high school this June. But next fall, he will begin his new career at Mission Valley Christian Academy in Polson as a multiple-subject teacher.

Onsager said his decision to change schools was his own.

Ronan High School teachers work with a lot of technology-driven equipment, Onsager said, but he described himself as a “technological dinosaur.”

 “I don’t like technology and I don’t like sitting at a computer,” Onsager said. “It’s time to leave that to the young pups.”

Onsager’s RHS retirement was a hard reality for students and staff. And their love for him showed, he said, when they asked him to be the commencement speaker,at this year’s graduation.

Held June 19, it was the school’s 100th commencement.

“This was an extraordinary senior class with excellent young people,” Onsager said, adding that graduation commencement speakers are chosen largely by student influence.

“They enjoyed my teaching for whatever reason. I was surprised they wanted to hear me one last time and it was a real honor to get that chance,” he said.

Onsager’s experience at Ronan High School began when he attended in the late 1960s. As a 17-year-old junior, Onsager came to the school from Minneapolis-St. Paul. His first year in the school was memorable because of who cared if students showed up, learned or even taught: 

No one, he said.

“It did not seem to matter if you behaved or even showed up,” he said. “Even the teachers didn’t show up.”

“I had no complaints,” Onsager said. “I was a little guy and I played football. But it was not a good school.”

Onsager said that his senior year at Ronan High School ushered in a stark change, and inspired him for the rest of his life.

In 1969, when Joe McDonald took over, things changed.

“He turned the tide for the high school,” Onsager said. “He started wrestling that year and coached football. He used football and wresting to teach that there was an expectation that we were capable and expected in every area. He was a remarkable man. He inspired you with turn around and he got all of us to believe that anything was possible. He took a special interest in individuals and showed us we were capable.”

After high school, Onsager said he jumped on the physical education and history teaching track, starting college and then dropping out. Onsager took a job, he said, to pay his college debt. He married and started a family.

Onsager eventually moved to Ronan and worked at a creamery to support his wife and two sons. After the creamery, Onsager worked for his father’s insurance company, which he later sold to Bill Bishop. But it was not until Onsager moved to Alaska for a year to sell insurance that he yielded to his life-long call to teaching.

That is when he finished his college education and returned to his dream to teach.

“Some people thought I was crazy,” Onsager said. “It is something you really have to put your heart into. I knew that I wanted to somehow get back and make a difference, and I knew I enjoyed working with kids”

Onsager spent his first two years teaching English at Bigfork Middle School. He came to Ronan High School during the early 1980s as an English teacher.

Now that his Ronan High School career is complete, Onsager said he loved his time in the district. Along with teaching, Onsager coached wresting for 23 years and football for 10 years, he said.

“Now I am teaching some grandkids of students I taught. I have enjoyed it. It’s been very good to me.”

Onsager said he chose to continue teaching at Mission Valley Christian Academy because it offered a nice transition between working and retirement. It offers smaller class sizes, something that Onsager said will help him make a difference in the lives of those students until it’s time to do something else.