Leonard Clay to retire after 14 years at Blair

Tech-Ed teacher Leonard Clay is retiring at the end of this year, after 14 years at Blair and 37 years with MCPS. He plans to go into a small home-based telecommunications business after leaving Blair.

Clay has been a tech-ed teacher for his entire teaching career, although he occasionally taught ESOL as well. He is most proud of the projects in the tech-ed curriculum, which he carefully selected after years of experimentation, "I think the mousetrap activity was one of our biggest accomplishments hear at Blair. It's been running for the past four or five years. Kids could really get into what we were doing because they actually liked what we were doing," Clay said, referring to a Tech-Ed project where students built miniature vehicles powered only by mousetraps. The students then tested their inventions to see whose went the furthest.

Another favorite project among students, according to Clay, is one involving construction of a catapult. Students "build the old war vessels [in the style of those that would] kill each other back in the old days. It's fascinating to the kids to develop a weapon like that," he says. According to Clay, the students love to shoot objects at each other using their catapults, "killing" one another.

Clay used to co-own a business with his brother. The two ran the first Bojangles' Famous Chicken 'n Biscuits franchise in the D.C. area. That was back in 1989, and while Clay's involvement in the restaurant is over, he does plan to get back into business.

Clay feels that after his long service to MCPS, "it's time to go. There are other things I'm interested in doing at this point in life."