Sean C. Morgan
Sweet Home Charter School’s new principal aims to inspire students to learn.
Jeff Tompkins says he learned how important that was early in his career while teaching rural north Alaskan children.
Tompkins, 38, started teaching at Sweet Home Charter School four years ago.
Born and reared in Eugene, he graduated from Churchill High School in 2000. He earned his bachelor’s degree in education at Pacific Lutheran University in 2004 and a master’s degree in education leadership at Grand Canyon University in 2009.
Out of college, he took his first teaching job at Gambell, Alaska, on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea just below the Arctic Circle and closer to the Russian mainland than it is to the Alaska mainland. It is so isolated it may only be accessed by air, typically via Nome. The village of about 600 might see a barge once a year.
Tompkins said he saw a pet caribou riding in the back of a truck in Nome.
“I was in a village where literally I could see Russia,” Tompkins said. “Everything was based on planes.”
He recalled having to ride in a cargo plane to get off the island for Christmas one year. At the time, it didn’t have any roads at all. Everyone got around on four-wheelers and four-wheel-drive vehicles.
The village has a K-12 school, with at least one teacher per grade, more than 20 total.
Tompkins’ experiences there have colored his teaching philosophy ever since, and it directly inspired his decision to have an Iditarod theme during the Charter School’s read-a-thon during his second year there.
He wanted to inspire a visually impaired kindergarten student, so he invited Rachael Scdoris of Bend to speak at Sweet Home Charter School. Scdoris is a blind cross country runner and dog musher who, in 2006, became the first legally blind person to complete the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Tompkins spent four years teaching in Alaska, he said.
“That was a great adventure. If it wasn’t for meeting my wife, I’d still be there.”
Tompkins met his wife Jenny through the Internet. She was teaching in Taiwan. He joined her there and taught for a year. After that, it was time for his stepson to return to the states, and the family moved to Oregon.
He landed a year-long job as principal at a small preschool through fifth-grade Christian School, Willow Creek Academy in Eugene.
From there, he worked in the Royal Caribbean call center in Springfield and then at Amtrak as a ticket agent. While living in Eugene, he worked in Tacoma.
“I didn’t get to see the family so much,” Tompkins said. He was looking for work in education. His Amtrak job was good and reliable. It paid well, so he didn’t want to do the “sub thing.” He needed a permanent job.
He started at Sweet Home Charter School as a kindergarten teacher. Since then, he has taught the fifth grade because he did so much science, which the state was beginning to test.
When Tavia Thornton retired as principal last year, “she said, you know the families here. They would be thrilled and happy to have you as principal,” Tompkins said.
Tompkins loves teaching, he said, but after a time, he decided he would take the job.
“It’s a challenge but a good challenge,” he said.
With the family atmosphere at the Charter School, and many students attending the school from the kindergarten onward, their challenges are like those among siblings.
Along the way, Tompkins has taught all but the third grade, he said.
“I’ve seen the whole thing, and there’s something to appreciate about each age level.”
It was his experience with fourth-graders in Alaska that set the tone for his career.
Gambell doesn’t welcome outsiders initially, he said. The people there expect teachers to leave quickly. Indeed, some get off the plane and turn around because it is so remote.
When he arrived, he found that approximately half the students wouldn’t even come to school, Tompkins said. He took the first-grade class “to inspire the passion” for learning – in the hopes of inspiring those students to keep going to school in the later grades.
“I wanted to establish a relationship and establish a sense of belonging,” he said. He had that after the first year and it helped with his teaching.
His goal in Alaska, as it has been in Taiwan and Sweet Home, is to introduce students to a wider experience. Students from Gambell might get as far as Nome, for example, Tompkins said. He tried to show them something more, to encourage them to go out and experience the world.
“I think it’s important to let that affect you and change you and appreciate that life is not always the way we see it or know it,” Tompkins said. The idea “is to inspire,” to show students “you can do this too.”
Last year, the read-a-thon theme was “inspire to greatness,” he said, and the school has a saying all the students recite periodically. The passage opens with, “Today, I will do my best to be my best. What I do today will make a difference in my life.”
He wants that to be more than just a saying. That’s why he invites speakers like Scdoris. Last year, the school hosted American Ninja Warrior” star Travis Rosen, who also grew up in Eugene.
Sweet Home Charter School has some 146 students, with just two spaces open in the fifth grade.
Tompkins said he is thankful for the good relationship that the Charter School has with the School District, and the district has already reached out to the Charter School to offer some of what it is doing with upcoming Student Success Act funding.
Tompkins and his wife have three children, Toby, 20, Samuel, 4; and Abby, 2.
Tompkins commutes to Sweet Home from Eugene, where his family lives up the street from his in-laws. His wife teaches in the Bethel School District on the west side of Eugene.
But Sweet Home is part of his home.
“We have a great community, a family feel in this school here,” Tompkins said. “Being part of this family of teachers has been inspirational to me.”