20 Who Count: Jeff Carter
By Cameron Montemayor
Over the last 14 years, longtime Central High School history teacher Jeff Carter has helped turn the school’s Scholar Bowl program into a state powerhouse while mentoring countless students to academic success along the way.
A desire to coach ultimately led Carter, a former Central alum, to start the Scholar Bowl program at Benton before taking it to Central in 2010.
The team-based competition quizzes students on a wide variety of subjects from history, science, math, pop culture, literature and fine arts. Students practice multiple times a week and compete from October until late May.
“You take kids that really enjoy knowledge and learning and here’s this world of knowledge … lets see how much of it we can learn.”
Carter and numerous students have built a culture and tradition of success through comradery and a competitive pursuit of knowledge.
The team made their first state tournament appearance in 2014 before rattling off nine straight appearances, culminating in the ultimate prize with their first state title in 2022.
They followed that up by placing 31st out of 350 schools in nationals while competing against top cities like New York and Chicago, a tremendous achievement for the program when compared to the resources at other school’s disposals.
“I coach them up, but ultimately they’re the ones that go out there and compete. They want the achievement,” he said. “”They’re taking that and going off to do incredible things, I’ve got kids that are at Yale, Harvard, Vanderbilt.”
Carter takes tremendous pride seeing what Central has done with student success and students working to motivate others to be their best.
“Every day is an opportunity to learn something new … that’s how I approach teaching history, learning more about the past helps us understand where we are today.”
It’s that approach that Carter attributes to his success educating students and helping them make connections between past and present.
Carter has also overseen Central’s student government program since 2015, crediting many of the students for their initiatives and determination.
“The homecoming dance is now one of the biggest events of the year, we used to have 200 kids show, now we have almost 900 to 1000 kids show up.”
