Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Mr. Long
On his first day on the job, he had to locate the Colfax schools' pig scale and take it to a property to weigh a student's pig. He had no pickup and the scale could not be found.
It turned out Roxanna Scholz, an FFA student's mother, had the scale and she offered Brian Long her diesel pickup – after just meeting him – and he drove it to the Robinsons' place north of Colfax to weigh the animal.
Now, 13 years later, Brian Long is leaving the district and its FFA program of 90 students for a new job in Sultan, Wash.
He leaves after leading students to 15 state FFA titles and two $5,000 Monsanto Nutrients for Life grants.
“I'll miss the kids, there's no two ways about it,” said Long, a Pomeroy native and former FFA state officer. “So much of my life revolves around my job. I don't know if it's set in, right now; the last three weeks of school is chaos, it always is.”
His last day is Friday – the last day of school.
He will begin next year as the Career and Technical Education Director and ag teacher for Sultan, a town east of Everett. Sultan is a 1A school with a current enrollment of 428.
On May 20, Long completed certification through the Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction (OSPI) for career and technical education.
In Sultan he will handle budgeting and the direction of the department, looking to diversify it from wood shop and metal shop. For ag he will teach a program with its own fish hatchery.
“I have no idea what kind of fish are in there now. I'll find out,” he said.
The Sultan ag program caters to the area, with a focus on logging, horticulture and greenhouses – which grow decorative plants.
“How I'm looking at it is, strengthening the program, to make it reflect what the community is about,” Long said.
In Colfax, Long ran the school's annual Ag Day, helped with the FFA's doughnut mini-barn at the fair, served as a senior class advisor and took the lead on the Mr. Bulldog pageant until this year when he handed off the reins.
Now he starts to make his way out.
“I've been slowly transitioning what makes the shop mine out,” he said.
Concluding his 13 years in Colfax, he remembers the beginning clearly – his first full-time teaching job after student-teaching in Warden.
He was not intimidated.
“Intimidating is what I did the year as a state officer,” he said.
In Colfax, he bought a pickup within three months.
It was the fall of 2003, and last week marked the graduation of the kindergarten class which began with him.
Long started in agriculture hauling irrigation pipe on his father's 40-acre alfalfa farm. From there he started in FFA – at the behest of his older sister – and was later chosen to serve a year after high school as state vice president.
“It was a fundamentally shaping experience,” Long said. “Learning to be engaging without being annoying.”
In the process, he sold the benefits of FFA.
“The science behind agriculture, the marketing, the economics behind it,” he said.
At Colfax, Long taught ag biology, ag physical science, human body systems, principals of Biomedical sciences, basic shop – metal work, electrical wiring, small engines – advanced shop and plant science.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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