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CAREER EDUCATION
RICK TOWNSEND | Developing homegrown talent
ick Townsend has his goal set on seeing Golden Isles Career Academy at its full potential as a training center for the next generations of workers. To do that, Townsend, chief executive officer of the public charter school for career education, has to help students at the school reach their own full potentials. Townsend looks at this goal as both challenging and rewarding for the students, the vocational school and the MY STORY community. Once a student understands Why I live here what he or she wants to do “It’s been a good in life, the student will be in place for my family a better position to pursue a to settle.” postsecondary degree or utilize What I tell others those skills acquired within the community, Townsend says. about life here “If they find out what they “Life is what you want to do in life at a young make it down here. age, it’ll help them find their It has great repath in life, especially in postsources and great secondary education,” he says. people.” “That’s what drives the career academy.” For him, operating at maximum capacity also means the vocational school is producing not only people who are ready to work in their fields of choice, but people who will stay in the Golden Isles and put their skills to use at home. “I want the students to get postsecondary training and then live in Glynn County and work,” Townsend says. “We need to increase our workforce. I feel like that’s my
CAREER EDUCATION MY STORY Why I live here “I grew up in Decatur. Coming from a metro area, it’s a very good place to raise a family.”
What I tell others about life here “It’s a hidden secret, especially to my family in Atlanta. It’s never really too hot or cold.”
job here.” Townsend doesn’t see how any of the students – or anyone else for that matter – who have walked through the doors of the academy wouldn’t want to stay and work in Glynn County. After working at Golden Isles Career Academy the past four years, Townsend – the father of two daughters at
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Glynn Academy and the husband to a wife who teaches in the Glynn County School System – sees the area as a great place to live and have a family. “There are a lot of good people in Glynn County. It’s nice to be in a community that supports education,” Townsend says. “It’s just a beautiful area.” – Martin Rand III
SENETRA HAYWOOD | Leading as a role model
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s principal of Golden Isles Career Academy, the public charter school, Senetra Haywood has authority to tell people what to do. But she considers herself a servant to the teachers, students and the community. “As principal, my job is serve the students, parents and teachers,” she says. “It’s not something I take lightly. I want teachers to have all the resources they need to help students learn and grow.” Since becoming principal in 2010, Haywood says the job has been difficult at times, but she finds it easier – and rewarding – to accomplish goals with the amount of community support behind the school system in the county. “The support the community shows to the school system is incredible,” says Haywood, who has two young children enrolled at C.B. Greer Elementary School in the public school system. “You don’t see that a lot in many other communities.” In addition to serving the school’s needs, Haywood wants to be an inspiration to minority students at the school. Being a black woman in a principal’s position is not something that happens all that often, she says.
“I’m able to show them that they can attain anything they want. We want them to see that they can do it,” Haywood says. “People blazed a trail for me, so I want to blaze a trail for them.” Haywood also tries to change the cultural misconception of a school principal. When Haywood was in school, going to the principal’s office was seen as a bad thing, so she tries to change that line of thinking by talking to stu-
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dents and building a relationship with them. While the Golden Isles feels like home to her now, Haywood admits that she never heard about the coastal gem until she attended Georgia Southern University as a freshman, in 2000. Now, after years of living and working here, Haywood couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. – Martin Rand III
PROFILES The Brunswick News / Saturday, March 29, 2014 83