Portland Boys & Girls Club location to be named after teacher at Woodlawn Elementary

Lionel Clegg had a good reason for being well-dressed and freshly shaven on Wednesday. It just wasn’t the reason he thought it was.

Clegg, a first-grade teacher at Woodlawn Elementary School in Northeast Portland, was convinced by his girlfriend, Frewine Kiros, that they had a date, bound by a strict 4 p.m. restaurant reservation.

Since Clegg wouldn’t get out of school until 3:30 p.m., Kiros told him he should already be dressed.

Little did he know, Kiros was in on a much bigger scheme — to surprise Clegg at a school assembly that afternoon.

Clegg was honored Wednesday by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland Metropolitan Area for his years of service and dedication to the community. The Boys & Girls Club will rename their Wattles location in Southeast Portland the Lionel Clegg Boys & Girls Club. They will also endow a yearly scholarship in his name and donate $1,000 to him for school supplies.

It’s an unusual honor since renaming choices often honor those no longer living and those with more name recognition than a typical school teacher.

But Clegg is not a typical teacher.

Described by district officials as a “teacher extraordinaire,” Clegg is in his 25th year as an educator, all served at Woodlawn, the very school he attended as a child and the reason he became an educator.

Clegg also won OnPoint Community Credit Union’s K-5 Educator of the Year award in 2021.

“Initially for me, I was going to be a business management major,” Clegg told OPB. “But then something came upon me and just made me think … ‘I don’t want to get burned out 10 years down the road … regardless of how much money I make.’ I still don’t want to live a life that I don’t enjoy doing [the] work.

“Woodlawn is what came to my mind,” he said. “I thought of things I enjoy, and as a child, Woodlawn was some of my fondest memories. [I’ve] always had a good connection and rapport with kids. So, I decided to get into education. And it’s been, honestly, a blessing ever since.”

Clegg knew he’d been nominated for the honor by his girlfriend, and that he was a finalist. But as part of the ruse, Kiros managed to convince him he hadn’t won.

“When the director stood up and said, you know, that there was a special announcement and everything, … my heart was kind of like, ‘Okay, something might be going on,’ " he said about the Wednesday ceremony.

Then officials called his name. The kids clapped and screamed and cheered. They started chanting, “Mr. Clegg! Mr. Clegg!”

The last hoorah: Clegg saw a curtain open. Behind were several friends and family members, including Clegg’s fourth-grade teacher, Rolia Manyongai.

“I just teared up immediately,” he said, recalling a rush of emotions. “Tears of joy, of course, but it was just really a great moment for me.”

Clegg said some of the most rewarding moments in his career have included hearing from former students, getting invites to their graduation ceremonies and weddings. He remembers individual students who may have been reluctant to learn under a new teacher but then blossomed throughout their time together.

He wants to get back into a habit he had for more than a decade where he wrote one- or two-page letters for each student at the end of every year.

Woodlawn is a highly diverse school, with a majority of students identified as Black, Latino or multiracial. Clegg is a person of color, though more than half of the teachers at Woodlawn — and most in schools across Oregon — are white.

He knows a lot of how he approaches his job is inspired by his former teacher, Manyongai. Before she retired, Clegg got to team-teach with her.

“She was the first Black teacher that I had ever had,” Clegg said, adding that growing up in the 1980s, there weren’t many positive images of African American people on TV. “To see a woman being so proud of her heritage and her background, that really got me more enthused to want to know more about my own culture as well.”

Clegg said he was also deeply affected by the expectations she placed on her students. “I had never had a teacher that really gave me the understanding of why education is so important,” he said.

“So, some of the things that she taught me weren’t just academia, you know. It was also just a sense of being proud of who you are and where you come from.”

Clegg carries these lessons into his classroom today, he said, even with seemingly small gestures such as making sure he knows the correct pronunciation of every student’s name.

“I’ve had kids over the years tell me, ‘Well, just call me …’ and they’ll try and abbreviate their name,” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Absolutely not!’

“Your name has a meaning. And your parents named you for a specific reason,” Clegg continued, adding that respect is a two-way street. “I’m going to expect you to call me correctly by my name. So … why should you not expect the same thing?”

Clegg said he has ideas for how to use the money awarded by the Boys & Girls Club, but he wants his students to weigh in first.

“I think one of the most important messages that this brings is for my kids to see that anybody can be successful,” Clegg said.

“Something I always tell them every year [is] — success is not determined by the amount of zeros behind your paycheck,” he said. “It’s really about being happy with the life that you live.”