Tompkins High School Celebrates Tenth Anniversary
By Ella Ray, Tompkins High School Senior
With Tompkins’s 10th year of establishment creeping around the corner, the campus makes it their mission to remember the past struggles they have overcome as well as cherish the accomplishments that they have obtained. Along with the collaborative celebration among all athletic and fine art departments that took place August 10th, Campus Secretary Janin Huerter assures that there will be miniature celebrations within each of the different sections on campus throughout the year. AP Literature teacher Ashley Park had been one of the original staff members since it first opened, allowing her the opportunity to serve as a department chair as well as be a part of setting all of the new traditions.
“I was really lucky that the spring before it opened, I got the opportunity to be the department chair,” said Park. “I got to see when the building was unpainted and unfinished, getting to really see it come to life.”
While the campus had started out as a small pool of individuals, Park explains that it has grown into a connected community, students and staff meeting new people every day. Park also believes that students following different paths also often collaborate with each other, appreciating their peers’ unique perspectives and interests.
“As our programs have gotten really strong, with great fine arts and athletics, there are so many places people could get plugged in and get that excellence,” said Park. “Seeing everybody find a place to fit has been really neat.”
Throughout all of the years of establishment, the campus has been able to accumulate a certain set of morals, each newly enrolled student adopting them into their daily lifestyle. Park emphasizes that acts of simple kindness have been known to consistently occur within the student body, setting Tompkins apart from all of the other districts at the time.
“Within a year or two, we started to build an identity,” said Park. “It was interesting to build that culture and figure out what we wanted to be and what was important.”
Carrying on the tradition, assistant volleyball coach Cassie Prejean has become the first graduate to come back and work on campus. Similar to Park, Prejean believes that it was really unique to be present in building the culture and community of the campus. With such a small student body in the first few years, Prejean insists that the campus was so close as the students and staff had felt like they were a family. Prejean also emphasizes the amount of passion that both students and staff had brought to the table during the earlier years, teachers constantly trying to make their classes more engaging and connecting more with the students while Prejean’s peers were always determined to obtain more knowledge and create a shining reputation for their new school.
“We also felt like we might’ve been the underdog,” said Prejean. “That’s a position that I like being in because you can prove other people wrong in both academics and athletics.”
Even after graduating, Prejean had still held great pride in the everlasting community she and her classmates helped create, wanting to come back and preserve that welcoming culture. Prejean also had fondness for the fact that many of the pioneer staff members that were present when she was a student, such as Principal Mark Grisdale and Math Department Chair Lauri Crestani, were still roaming the halls and continuing their legacy. Seeing familiar faces, Prejean knew that it was a good sign that people had stayed. Additionally, Prejean stresses that returning staff members like Crestani had immensely helped grow her love for math, making her realize that she wanted to teach and create that same experience for the future students of the campus.
“It meant a lot to me as a student to see that community, so coming back and being able to be that teacher or coach role to continue that tradition for other students was something I really wanted to do,” said Prejean.
Source: Tompkins High School Journalism Department
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