SALEM, Ore. — Mitch Coleman, advisor of the Dayton FFA chapter, couldn’t help but smile as 15-year-old Kyra Navari left the FFA show ring at the Oregon State Fair last Friday afternoon. As soon as the judge opened Navari’s gate, her pig took off.

Navari eventually corralled her pig at the side of the ring and let him chew on her whip for the remainder of the session. Once it was over, she walked over to Coleman, looking disappointed.

Coleman, who has known Navari since she was in sixth grade, shook his head and smiled at her. “You are so hard on yourself, stop being hard on yourself,” he said.

Coleman, 62, has a calm, fatherly presence. As chaos breaks out around the Dayton FFA chapter’s section of the barn — a loose pig darts behind the bleachers, a restless lamb kicks its stall door, parents yell to their children — Coleman gathers 6 of the 10 girls from the Dayton FFA chapter around him. He looks at each and offers words of encouragement before they enter the show ring.

“Remember, having fun is the most important thing out there,” said Coleman. “If you're not having fun, it's not worth doing.”

The high schoolers, ages 15 to 18, absorb Coleman’s every word.

Coleman, who grew up raising and showing cattle, has dedicated his life to teaching agriculture and advising the FFA members at Dayton Junior School and High School in Oregon's Willamette Valley.

Over the last 33 years, Coleman has impacted students to the point that many have returned to the school to teach the next generation of young people, or even to bring their own children back to Dayton.

‘Like a Family’

“We feel like a family because we all look to Mitch for everything,” said Navari. “Not just our FFA agriculture stuff. He’s somebody respectable, has a lot of resources, literally anything we need. And it's nice, because not all advisors are like that. He’s definitely like a grandpa, some of us call him Papa.”

Ava Hargett, 17, is the ninth generation in her family to attend Dayton High School. Coleman taught her mother, uncle and her babysitter.

“We walk to Mitch’s house from school,” said Hargett.

A few years ago, Coleman and his wife, Anna, built a barn at their home in Dayton for students who wanted to get involved in FFA but didn’t have access to farmland.

“Kids at school, the sixth-graders and seventh-graders, basically anyone who can't drive, we will all walk to Mitch’s,” said Hargett. “It's a cool experience because other FFA chapters don’t have a chapter barn. I love it because anyone who wants to do (FFA) at our school has the opportunity.”

Despite teaching hundreds of students every year — Coleman taught 291 of the 350 students at Dayton Junior High School and High School last year — he wants every student who walks into his classroom to succeed.

‘That's Just My Job’

“My mantra every day is I have to look at each kid individually and help them to be better today than they were yesterday and better tomorrow than they are today,” said Coleman. “They're all different. That's just my job.”

Mia Garcia, 18, was 13 years old when she met Coleman for the first time. At the time, she was struggling with her home and social life, she said.

“When I came to Dayton, I was having such a hard time accepting myself,” said Garcia, who originally moved to Dayton to live with her grandmother. “If I have a question or a concern, Mitch goes out of his way to help me grasp what's going on. And nobody has really done that for me. I grew up in a very Hispanic culture where you are not really allowed to have opinions, you have to follow the rules. And Mitch doesn't do that.”

“As a freshman she was so timid,” said Coleman of Garcia. “But after her sophomore year, she started to believe in herself as much as I believed in her. I believe in a lot of (my students) way more than they believe in themselves. I just keep waiting for this switch and when that happens, it’s easy. You can now see (Garcia’s) confidence, feel and hear that confidence.”

Garcia has been the Dayton chapter president for the last two years and plans on attending Linn Benton Community College in the fall. She hopes to study agriculture business so she can one day start her own business to “create more opportunities for kids that don't grow up in an ag-based program, or an ag background,” like her.

“It really does change lives,” said Garcia.

Building a Better Future

For Coleman, it’s not just about teaching his students to raise livestock and grow crops in the greenhouse, he believes that teaching children about agriculture can build a better future for small towns such as Dayton.

Earlier this year, the Dayton FFA raised $320,000 selling their livestock at the annual auction at the Yamhill County Fair.

“My 97 kids brought back $320,000 into the community,” said Coleman. “What we do at Dayton, and the way that I teach kids is that we are a community, and we do everything together. There's a whole lot of things in our society that is all about ‘Who I am, how can I win this, it's all about me.’ I think we need to teach more of ‘How do we work together as a group, and how do we put other people first and more important than ourselves.’”