Known for giving students ‘left brain learning’ opportunities, Umbaugh retires from teaching

ORIENT — Perhaps known most by his current and former students for an ability to teach them something but allow them to learn it in a hands on way, it’s clear by talking to those people that Bill Umbaugh had an impact on them and he will be missed by his Orient-Macksburg vocational agriculture students going forward.

Umbaugh, an Adair native and a current resident of Adair, came back to Adair-Casey in 1989 to teach at Adair-Casey and never left this area. He taught the longest there and even served nine years as their principal, but Umbaugh retired Friday after 5 1/2 years as the agriculture sciences teacher and FFA advisor at Orient-Macksburg.

Umbaugh received education from Iowa State University, the University of Nebraska and was part of an ag and extension education graduate assistantship at Penn State University before he returned to Iowa, first teaching at CAL, Latimer, then Sidney.

Umbaugh said he first went into teaching because his father said it wasn’t a good time to start farming.

“I thought what a way to keep up with agriculture and be a part of agriculture than by teaching, and I enjoyed it,” Umbaugh said, adding that times have changed drastically in his tenure. “We have fewer kids coming off the farm now but have kids who are very savvy with technology.”

Umbaugh was central in creating a large scale livestock judging contest at Adair-Casey, sponsored by the school’s FFA chapter, that utilized video technology well before digital photography took hold, and it had national reach.

Arriving at Orient-Macksburg in 2015, Umbaugh enjoyed being able to give students there opportunities to learn using their hands, whether that be in the shop or learn about plant life or livestock in other first hand ways.

“It was a high learning curve. If you’re grinding off the end of a metal rod you don’t have it sticking out two feet from the vise, you have it maybe four inches from the vise to give it stability. Those things are what they learned,” Umbaugh said. “When I was on the farm you knew that stuff. Some of these kids today just don’t get those opportunities [apart from these classes].”

One recent project found the Orient-Macksburg students making barn owl nesting boxes to be donated to the Department of Natural Resources. Umbaugh found the opportunity in Iowa Outdoor Magazine and when the magazine learned the O-M students had stepped up to the plate to make these they now want to write about the students.

“You’ve gotta use the left brain as well as the right brain,” Umbaugh said, referring to the fact that the left side of a person’s brain is used for analytics and reasoning. “When you do those kinds of projects you’re using the left side of your brain you might not use in all [school subjects].”

As FFA advisor at Orient-Macksburg, Umbaugh said he’s proud the school has reached several accomplishments under his leadership, like seeing rural Greenfield student Merritt Caviness earn his American Farmer Degree with their chapter, students starting a faculty breakfast during National FFA Week and the gathering of walnuts from in front of the school and donating them to the State Forestry Department.

Caviness said the ag advisor at Orient-Macksburg when he was in high school was McKenzie Wallace, but he credits Michael Cooley — who is now at East Union — and Umbaugh as also aiding his growth in agriculture at that point in his life.

“They were the two who pushed me to get the American degree and also be in the running for Star Farmer in production. I didn’t have an awful lot of time working with Mr. Umbaugh aside from that application process. I will say he definitely saw that I was not taking full advantage of the opportunity and reached out repeatedly to push me the right direction and encouraged me to go ahead with it,” Caviness said. “It was just the portion after high school that I worked with Mr. Umbaugh. He was very helpful and his heart was in the right place. I needed a little convincing and looking back I’m glad I didn’t just let that stuff slip by.”

Because of his involvement in the Adair County Fair, 4-H and FFA programs in this county, Adair County Extension released a statement recently showing appreciation for Umbaugh’s time influencing young people here.

“Adair County Extension would like to thank Mr. Umbaugh for his years of service to Adair County youth,” the statement said. “He has always been a strong supporter of the 4-H program. We appreciate the leadership he provided to the Youth Action Committee.”

Orient-Macksburg student Christa Cass offered a statement to the newspaper as a current student of Umbaugh’s and what she will take away from his classes and participating in FFA.

“He always would congratulate me on everything I did and was very supportive. He always came up with something fun to do, whether it was making something or going outside,” Cass said. “For FFA, he would take us to do really fun things and then we would have a hilarious car ride home, making jokes, etc.”

In retirement, Umbaugh plans to spend time with friends and family and tend to a little bit of farm ground he has in the area.

Umbaugh said he is thankful for the time he had serving at small schools and cherishes both those who gave him that opportunity and the journey along the way.

“What I like about small schools is that there’s so much community pride. There’s so much of a desire to keep their school, and you don’t get that at a big school. The community will really step up to the plate for you,” Umbaugh said. “I’m very humbled to have had the opportunity to teach at Orient-Macksburg. It’s a great staff with great administrators. It’s a very welcoming community and they were more than kind to me during my stay there.”