Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 principals head abroad

Two Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 principals are leaving their post after this school year, saying goodbye to not only the district, but the country, too.

Kristy Csensich, principal of Ivy Hill Elementary School, will be moving to Peru, while Jeannie Sung, principal of South Middle School, is leaving for China.

Though they’re setting off for exotic locales, both expressed the difficulty of the decision and their fondness for their time in District 25.

Csensich, who will be an administrator at The American School of Lima, has been using her summers to feed her desire to travel abroad. In addition to Peru, she’s gone to China, Ecuador and Kenya in the past three years. In Peru, she brought water pumps, teaching communities how to get clean water into their schools. Eventually, she said, she made the decision to combine her interests in educating and traveling.

Additionally, she’s used these trips as an opportunity to teach her students. By blogging while overseas and bringing back pictures, she’s shared her story with the school.

She hopes to continue this education even when she’s left Ivy Hill, documenting her travels to Japan this summer and her extended stay in Peru after that on her blog. It’s part of an effort to broaden their horizons, she said.

“We try to be world-focused as a school community,” Csensich said. “We want our students to know and understand what’s beyond the walls of Ivy Hill and Arlington Heights.”

Jeannie Sung, who is moving to Guangzhou, China, due to her husband’s promotion, is no stranger to international travel, either. Before coming to South, she spent four years abroad, working at international schools in Indonesia and South Korea.

Once she gets settled in with her family, she said, she’ll seek a job in a local school in China in addition to completing her doctoral work.

Like Csensich, she described the her departure from District 25 as bittersweet, calling her position a “dream job” for any administrator in the area. She, too, mentioned the importance of the district’s emphasis on a broader worldview.

“This district is all about preparing our kids for our global society, and I think the community should really value that,” Sung said. “That’s where the world is now.”