Five years ago, Tenino High School took down its historic wooden sign for refurbishment, and discovered it was damaged beyond repair.
Instead of simply ordering a replacement, the school decided to embrace the situation as an opportunity to involve students and staff in their school’s legacy.
The culmination of their work was formally unveiled Monday, Sept. 28, with a new sign decorating the front of Tenino High School.
“It's been a really fun process, and it's a lot more fun once it's done,” said Tenino High School shop and welding teacher Ken Simeone.
Tenino High School Principal Scott Hyder approached Simeone about having his students make a new sign five years ago, after they learned the old sign couldn’t be repaired.
The two collaborated to develop an initial design, which was turned over to student Keegan Spahr for creation of a final design and a one-third-scale model.
That model is now permanently mounted to the school’s lectern.
“He did all the CAD design work that led to this. It’s his design, all the whole centers, everything that we see except the frame outside,” Simeone said of Spahr, who graduated in 2024.
Of the elements that ended up in the final product — an backlit, powder-coated aluminum sign bearing the Tenino “T” and the school’s mascot, “Beavers,” written in cursive underneath — Spahr said, “It just spiraled as we went. It really was just a snowball effect.”
Spahr had not done CAD work or aluminum welding before this project, but fell in love with it during the process and hopes to use those skills for paid work in the future.
“It was a big learning experience. It made me find stuff I actually enjoy doing and let me learn what I wanted to learn,” Spahr said.
With Spahr’s scale model, Simeone and his shop students spent the next four years creating the full-scale sign that now hangs at the school.
“Throughout this four-year process, there were a lot of days when I was like, ‘I should not have opened my mouth.’ It’s an amazing amount of work,” Simeone said. “But really, all that work was done by students.”
Simeone runs the Tenino High School shop like an actual production shop to give his students applicable hands-on experience that they can take out into the workforce.
That approach in a high school setting does come with limitations, however.
“I don’t know how many times I threatened to fire kids and they’re like, ‘Well, you’re not even paying us,’” Simeone joked.
The approach does give students a sense of work ethic and accomplishment upon seeing the finished product, and provides technical career training for students who may not be as suited to the traditional classroom setting.
“I see this a lot with kids that don't feel like they're good at school, and they get a shop, and all of a sudden they're good at something. They could do something that, like, really no one else, or very few people in the school, can do,” Simeone said. “It kind of sparks kids. It sparks them to realize and get a love of learning.”
Current Tenino High School senior Maleah Chacon served as the closing bookend on the project, doing the final finishing work on the sign.
“(She) really worked a lot last year finishing it, became a really good aluminum TIG welder,” Simeone said of Chacon.
The sign was powder coated over the summer and made ready for the maintenance crew to try hanging it up ahead of the first day of school, to make sure it would work in the space.
“I didn't realize how big it was in the shop until it got up on the wall,” Hyder said.
They ended up having to move it up from its original spot, so the top almost touches the edge of the roof, to keep it out of students’ reach.
“We were concerned kids would walk by and slap it,” Hyder said.
Despite needing to make that change, Hyder is proud of the finished sign.
“I don't think you could choose a better size at all, or a better design in any way,” he said.
Simeone and Chacon are already working on developing a design for a similar sign at Tenino Middle School, and are applying the lessons they learned creating the high school’s sign.
That sign will be slightly smaller, Simeone said.
