LIVERMORE FALLS – Mac Haynes says it’s time for somebody younger who has more energy and new ideas to oversee adult education.
Haynes, 65, is the director of the SAD 36/Jay Adult Education program, which serves Livermore, Livermore Falls and Jay.
He has submitted his resignation effective Nov. 1, but will be around for consultation, if the new director needs him.
Haynes, who retired in June as a teacher at Livermore Falls High School, started his career teaching geography at Michigan State University as a graduate assistant. He planned to get his Ph.D., but 35 years ago but he got sidetracked. He did the course work, he said, but then decided to take a year off for family reasons and never went back.
Instead, he spent 33 years teaching high school students and 23 years guiding a program that helped adults improve their education and their lives.
Haynes has seen the area lose jobs over the years, including shoe manufacturing and retail.
People come into the adult education center convinced that they can’t do anything, he said, and that they don’t have the skills.
“Our job is to point out to them the skills they have and provide them with the ones they don’t have,” Haynes said. “Every person has something that they’re good at and you just have to find it. It’s like you can’t help anybody until they are willing to help themselves and that’s what we tried to do, quite successfully over the years.”
He doesn’t know how many people the program’s helped over the years, he said, but it’s been many.
“I think there are a few families we haven’t affected over the years,” he said.
He said he likes to see people come to the center to improve their math skills or their reading skills or whatever else they need and then go off to college.
Several have done that, he said.
His dream when the program first started was to help people that had elementary level skills improve their intellectual skills so much that they ended up taking college courses.
During his tenure, he’s seen the implementation of interactive television to provide university courses at the center so that people would not have to travel far.
Three out of four people succeed in their education efforts, Haynes said.
The center offers basic education, college courses and enrichment classes from dancing to photography to American Sign Language. The latter is a very popular class, he said.
But if people are not ready to take the step to improve their education, Haynes said, there is not “much you can do for them.”
“If they’re ready they just take the bull by the horns and the ones that do that do well,” he said.
Haynes said he’ll miss the give and take with students.
He doesn’t have any concrete plans accept to continue to play golf and bowl.
“I’m going to play it by ear,” he said.
He said he has always wanted to visit the different environments around the world that he has taught about.
“I’d like to go see the Sahara Desert, and I’d like to go to Australia to see the outback and I’d like to go to Brazil to see the Amazon,” he said. “These are all things I’m considering.”
It’s time, he said, for someone else to oversee adult education.
“It’s time for somebody young with more energy and new ideas to have a go at it,” he said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
