Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

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MACK continued from 21 Mack had reservations about whether she was professionally “ready” to teach there, despite having four years of teaching under her belt at Richmond County’s Hephzibah High School and one year at Columbia County’s Lakeside High School. “I just didn’t know if I was ‘A.R. Johnson cut,’” said Mack, who graduated in the upper 20 percent of her class. “Parents hold their children to a higher standard here, so I felt a little bit of pressure to meet the expectations.” Mack teaches five different courses daily – ranging from Intro to Drafting and Design to 3D Modeling and Analysis – which requires her to juggle five different lesson plans and schedules. Mack jokingly says she had to “have an intervention” during her first year of teaching because of the stress. “If I had to start here my first year, mentally would I be ready? Now that I think about it, no,” said Mack, who earned a degree in architecture/interior design from Howard University in Washington, D.C. “The first year is rough, especially if you don’t have that experience in your family, with people who have been teachers before. With all the things that are thrown at you, you feel like you can’t get it all done, you can’t meet deadlines. You have to have people constantly telling you to hang in there.” One of the colleagues Mack leaned on during her early years was Millicent Bowman, who was Mack’s teacher when she was a student at A.R. Johnson. Bowman, who retired as a state K-12 teacher at Lakeside but continues teaching at Aiken Technical College, was among those who influenced Mack to become a teacher. Mack had graduated from Howard when the nation was in the early stages of the Great Recession. She wanted to stay in the metro D.C. area, but she could not find a job in her field. “I was even going on group interviews, where you’re sitting not just with yourself but with two other people showing your portfolios,” Mack recalled. She decided to return to Augusta to plot her next move and be closer to her parents, father Henry “Wayne” Howard, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives who represents Augusta’s District 124, and mother Cassandria. Mack grew up spending time at the family business, Howard’s Upholstery Co. on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, which influenced her college major. After returning to Augusta, Mack helped out at the family business and did freelance interior-design work before taking a full-time job at the Sephora cosmetics store at Augusta Mall. The job was by no means glamorous for an interior design graduate, but she said the retail job helped her sharpen skills she would later use as a teacher. “I learned some really good skills as far as management and customer service, which we are things we really use in the classroom every day,” she said. After two years, she enrolled in Augusta University’s master of arts teaching program in 2014. Her first teaching job at Hephzibah High was family consumer science, which was primarily focused on nutrition. Ironically, the interior design segment of the career-pathway course had been dropped the previous year. Four years later she would join Bowman, her mentor, at Lakeside to teach engineering and technology. The year was difficult for Mack because she was pregnant with her first child and was making nearly hour-long commutes from her home in North, S.C., a town just east of Wagener and north of Orangeburg. When the opportunity to teach at A.R. Johnson became available this past year, she jumped at the chance to shave a little time off her commute and return to her roots. Mack attended Tabernacle Baptist Church’s child development center before going to the nearby C.T. Walker Traditional Magnet School for her K-8 education. “Dad was super excited for me to be back in Richmond County; his prayers might have been the one that got me here,” she says jokingly. “He loves his district.” Mack said she knew she made the right decision when she picked up one of the school’s architecture textbooks; it was an updated edition of the same book her maternal grandfather – James Burroughs, who taught architecture and construction at Aiken High School – gave her before leaving for Howard University. “Seeing it was like one of those spiritual, divine things,” she said. “We would always have these talks about engineering because I saw him mocking up plans. I would show my drawings to him and we would talk about it.” Considering the transitions she made in her own life – from wanting to be an architect to an interior designer to a teacher – Mack said she tries to help students decide on a career choice by assigning them to create a “career portfolio.” The assignment has students detail engineering/ technology occupations and the education, tools and skills – both “hard” and “soft” skills – that the jobs require. “The skills you end up obtaining through college can really cross over into other engineering fields,” she said. “So I’m not going to say, ‘You have to make a decision by college,’ but you need to be at least close to it.” She believes the exercise also helps students “manage their expectations” regarding their future. “Otherwise, they’re going to come out of school with these false realities, and that’s how people get into depression and anxiety,” she said. “The pressure is really there for students to decide on a career; to make a certain amount of money by this certain time.” Mack said she was unsure if teaching would be her longterm career when she first started. But now that she has grown more confident and is beginning to see the impact she is having on the next generation of A.R. graduates, she believes education is the final stop on her occupational journey. “Every year you get challenged to make things better in your classroom, and that’s how you end up staying,” she said. “And I feel that is happening. My classroom gets better every year.” 66 | 1736magazine.com 1117_T_66_AM____.indd 66 10/25/2019 12:02:52 PM
DEPOT continued from 64 Retail Strategies has been a contract consultant of Augusta’s Downtown Development Authority since 2013. BLOC Global executives have been working with the authority and the city to develop the riverfront tract since 2016. The company in 2018 formally announced the Riverfront at the Depot concept and has since been going through legal and contractual procedures to acquire the property, which comes with a $12 million commitment from the city to construct two parking decks that would be used by residents, visitors and employees of the nearby Unisys office. The two, two-level decks would accommodate space for 850 vehicles and serve as the foundation for the upscale apartment community, whose first floor would be level with the riverfront levee and the Riverwalk Augusta pedestrian and bike trail. BLOC Global, which has completed its due diligence period and is financing its $80 million portion of the development through multiple sources, had planned to break ground this fall. Delays in finalizing the bond agreement and other contracts involved in acquiring the property – which the city has valued at $1.8 million – has pushed the construction start date into 2020. Carpenter said the ball is essentially in “the Augusta Commission’s court.” He said the groundbreaking date is a “moving target.” “We realize these kind of public-private partnerships take time, but every day that we don’t have action is delaying the project,” Carpenter said. “Right now, we’re ready to move the ball forward.” The project would be the single-largest private investment in downtown Augusta since construction of the Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center and adjacent Augusta Riverfront Center office building in the early 1990s. That project also was a public-private partnership, with the city investing in the convention center’s parking decks and other public infrastructure. The property on which the Depot development will sit has been vacant and off the county’s tax rolls since the city acquired the property from the railroad nearly 60 years ago. Aside from future property and sales taxes, BLOC Global has estimated the project will create nearly 800 jobs during construction and 230 permanent jobs once completed. 1736magazine.com | 67 1117_T_67_AM____.indd 67 10/25/2019 12:38:49 PM
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Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

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