Six Things to Know

SIX THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT Jon Harvey, Assistant Principal- Middle School

Jon grew up in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, in Westmorland County. He attended Nyack College where he received his degree in Elementary Education. Jon taught 6th grade for four years at Abundant Life Academy in Nutley, New Jersey. He took a new position teaching enrichment classes to gifted and talented students in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Jon completed his Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership, which later led him to take the position of Middle School Assistant Principal at Lakeland Christian.

Jon met his wife Lauren while at Nyack College. The couple has two kids. Their oldest daughter, Reagan, is in K4 at LCS. She loves all things unicorns and can usually be found climbing and hanging upside down from the monkey bars. Their son, Rhett, is two and a half and enjoys searching for fire trucks, police cars and ambulances. He loves to play “hit,” aka, baseball. In 2006, Jon traveled on a mission trip to Swaziland, South Africa, where he traveled around teaching kids about the Bible, building shelters and providing education on hygiene. Jon credits this trip for confirming his calling to be an educator. Another highlight of the trip was holding a lion cub and going on an African safari.

In 2018, Jon’s students won a national STEM contest, called Samsung Solve for Tomorrow. Using the engineering and design process, his students created a prototype for identifying undetected concussions using microcontrollers placed inside each football player’s helmet. This data would be analyzed and sent to alert the coach or parent’s cell phone if the data collected in the algorithm met the threshold. His school was announced as a national winner live on Good Morning America in New York City. Each of the students won a technology package and the school won $150,000 worth of technology.

Jon has run competitively since college when he joined the crosscountry team. After college, Jon started to run longer races, including a total of six marathons. Jon’s fastest race qualified him for the Boston Marathon. In 2017 while running the Boston Marathon, he ran his slowest race and later found out he was running with two herniated discs. BUT...he finished the race.

Alongside a team of three friends, Jon biked from Pittsburgh to Washington D.C. totaling over 300 miles in four days. The rain-filled trip was a memorable experience as Jon and his team stayed in tents along the route. On day three, the team had a flat tire and could not remove it without proper tools, so Jon ran the final 10 miles of the day until they found the tools at the next campsite.

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