Yamhill Carlton High School was originally built in the 1930s and no matter how old this building gets the memories and traditions will never be forgotten.
High School is meant to be the place where you make mistakes and learn from them, and have fun before adulthood.
And for these two siblings that’s exactly what it was like. They have both worked in the YC foundation for a couple years now.
Jared Collins is a high school shop teacher and in FFA. And Liberty Seal is a agriculture science teacher and FFA advisor.
Collins has been at Yamhill Carlton High School for over 5 years and has enjoyed teaching and being involved in teaching students in the shop and FFA. Liberty Seal has been at Yamhill Carlton High School for 2 years now and has enjoyed the environment and being involved with her students and teaching.
Collins was known to be very active in high school and loved to play sports and do FFA conventions and programs with his friends he traveled a lot. Seal has been active in many hands-on activities with her students. High school was all about traditions back when she went to Yamhill Carlton High School, which was original called Yamhill High School. She is the third generation in her family to graduate from this high school. She loved hearing the stories and seeing that they were still happening.
A little about Collins is that High School necessarily didn’t come easy to him, He struggled a little his freshman year but FFA was what kept him going, Collins said. He got top state and public speaking for FFA and that was a pretty big accomplishment for him. FFA weeks are known to be pretty fun, including donkey basketball.
Back when Collins went to high school, a big tradition at Yamhill Carlton High School was playing “Eye The Tiger” by musical group the Survivor. It would always get the school hyped and pumped and any function. “That song seems to always resonate me, like it got played before like at every single sports game. And it was just kind of like a funny tradition like it, it seemed like it was always played.”
They also did the same thing high schoolers do at Yamhill Carlton High School now and will continue to do the “Tiger Chant” – For the black, for the black fight fight, for the orange, for the orange fight fight.
“Class sizes were a little bigger, than what they normally are now and the students would get really loud and chant this in the old gym,” Collins said.
“The crowds really got into like basketball games, for instance, we would like to do funny things that we wouldn’t allow to do today, like when they were doing the starting lineups, we would read, we’d all have newspapers and we’d read the newspaper.”
“If we were looking like we’re going to win a game, they would all get our keys out and shake our keys like we’re going home. So some of those memories were really funny. I’m not saying it was a good thing, but as a student,” he enjoyed it.
A big tradition that Seal really enjoyed was the vineyard harvest. She thinks that it’s a really cool thing that happens every year here that really brings all the Ag classes together.
Some of her community members are big supporters of the Ag program. They come in to help, like Mark Gould, who works for Ken Wright cellars, comes in and helps harvest and teaches students about it,” Seal said.
This tradition started when Seal was a high school student at Yamhill Carlton High School.
“It was around 2013 or 2014 the grapevines were planted, and then the first harvest happened in 2017.”
For her, this vineyard harvest is a part of what she teaches, and it also gives students hands -on opportunities to learn about the agriculture industry. And then it’s also kind of a fun activity too. So her and students also get to kind of celebrate agriculture, which is what our community was built on.
“So I have a viticulture class. That class is mainly focused on vineyard activities, but I take all of my classes down for vineyard harvest, and it’s fun to see them get outside, and they tend to enjoy it,” Seal said.
Collins thinks if you have pride in your school, your high school experience will just be so much more enjoyable. If you feel like you are connected to other kids in your class and just being kind of proud to be going to YC and feel like you’re going to a good school when you have bought into the program, it’s just so much more enjoyable.
They both also relate to their kids how important it is to have pride in the school that you go to. And you know, if you’re not proud of your school, then you need to be finding ways to make it better. Try to be part of a solution rather than a problem. If you see that we’re lacking in certain areas, and it’s your opportunity to make it better.
