Kelly Kenoyer
A longtime Alaska educator has been named principal at Sweet Home Junior High.
Terry Martin’s hiring was confirmed by the School Board at its August meeting earlier this month.
Growing up in Hermiston, Martin wanted some adventure. After getting an undergrad degree in teaching at Western Oregon University, followed by a master’s degree in school leadership at Eastern Washington, he worked for four years in Stanfield, Oregon as an English teacher. But adventure called, and Martin decided to head north, to Alaska.
“The freedom you have, the opportunity, hunting and fishing, it’s just good times,” he said. He’d been drawn to Alaska since second grade, when a teacher had students write up a “life list.” Alaska made the cut, for Martin, “probably because we had just watched “Balto” or something, and that stayed with me,” he said.
Martin, 50, spent a few years teaching at a tiny district in the Arctic, but soon moved to the Kenai Peninsula to work at Nikolaevsk School, a K-12 school with 150 students. It’s a school based in a community of Russian Old Believers.
“I think it’s how things were 40 or 50 years ago,” he said, adding that Russian Old Believers highly value education. After three years there, he moved “up the road” to another school, where he worked for seven more years.
Next he headed back to Northwest Arctic, where he worked as an assistant principal for four years before working at the district office in 2014. Over the course of his 20 years in Alaska, Martin spent “90 percent of it” in just two districts, he said
“I’d rather put down roots somewhere,” he said, and the new place for his roots is Sweet Home.
The coronavirus experience drove home the importance of family for Martin, so he started looking for jobs in the Willamette Valley.
“When we first went into lockdown, I was re-evaluating what’s important,” he said after he was hired. “In the last 10 days, I’ve probably been able to see more of my family than in the last 10-15 years. Oregon is home, Oregon is so hard to beat in so many ways.”
His dad is up the road in Lebanon. His sister lives in Keizer, and he has an aunt and uncle who spend much of the year in Salem. Since moving to Linn County, Martin has spent time picking peaches and blackberries and enjoying the Oregon summer. “Hermiston melons, they’re the best melons in the world,” he said.
“My grandpa was a logger here in the Pacific Northwest, so I love seeing the logging trucks go by.”
Sweet Home reminds him a lot of Hermiston when he was growing up – t’s about the same size as his hometown was when he was younger.
“The people here have been incredibly friendly,” he said, adding that “Steve and Tracy at Foster Lake Inn” helped his family find a place to stay.
“He said, ‘You’re one of us now, we’ll make It work.’ I mean, holy smokes, where do you hear that anymore in today’s society?”
Martin said he is already used to working in a district this size – population-wise, anyway. The Northwest Arctic district he worked in included about 2,000 students, though they were spread across 11 villages in “an area the size of Indiana.”
“Yeah, our school bus was a charter plane,” he said. “But kids are kids.”
Martin is focused on making this school year a good one for his new students, despite all the restrictions caused by COVID-19.
“Education was really set on its ear last March,” Martin said. “I’m very concerned with connection for our students and our families.”
He’s hoping to be as supportive as possible for the new class of seventh-graders coming in.
“We’re already planning to have office hours twice a day for our staff to reach out to families, to reach out to students,” he said. They’ve built a simple schedule of four classes to create a “rigorous but achievable” curriculum. It will include three core classes: math, science, and language arts, as well as a rotating elective class: health, P.E., or multimedia.
“Parents are asking how many hours is my son or daughter going to have to sit in front of a computer,” he said, and he’s working hard with teachers to try to address those concerns.
“I would like us to offer a daily activity for the students, like going for a walk, a bike ride, or maybe even geocaching.”
He said everyone in the school is already looking forward to in-person schooling, so on top of planning for online classes, they’re discussing the mode of operation once in-person classes are back on.
But Martin is also still working on officially moving to a rental in Sweet Home, which is a priority for his family so they can get to know the community and support local businesses.
“Right now we’re living in Lebanon because we couldn’t find a place,” Martin said. He’s still on the hunt for a rental, and hopes someone can reach out with an option for him, his wife, and their adult daughter who just came back from an overseas deployment.
“If you hear of a rental here in Sweet Home, let me know.
Otherwise, things are going well!”