Teachers

Never Too Old To Learn
By Katherine Williams

The Learning Center is one of the more out-of-the-way, lesser talked-about educational venues in Ellsworth. But the programs within Ellsworth Adult Education, which makes its home in the Learning Center building out on Boggy Brook Road, produce results as noteworthy as any of the city’s traditional schools.

Virginia Wilbur, one of the facilitators for Ellsworth Adult Education, has quite a bit to do with that.

“Maybe I can help someone,” is Wilbur’s modest reason for continuing to teach at age 77.

Wilbur, of Eastbrook, is closing in on nearly 40 years of teaching within Hancock County. She spent 25 years at Mount Desert Elementary School; five years at Life Christian Academy; and the last seven with Ellsworth Adult Education.

Her impact on Ellsworth-area students is perhaps stronger now than ever before. The ones she works with now are generally older. Many of them juggle jobs and families while trying to meet their educational goals.

“We work with a different kind of student,” Wilbur said. “They haven’t had anyone to really push them in the past.

“I like to teach students of all ages, but when they reach this stage in life, there is a greater need. These are students who for the most part have not been able to get their high school diplomas before.”

The Ellsworth Adult Education program draws students from Ellsworth, Hancock, Lamoine, Surry, Trenton, Waltham, Amherst, Otis, Franklin and several Mount Desert Island communities.

The annual report by Robert Maddocks, the program’s full-time director, indicates as many as 1,800 students a year take advantage of offerings from Ellsworth Adult Education.

Most of those are responding to the mass-mailing (20,000 brochures) that announces an array of classes starting in September or January. These range from hobby-oriented offerings such as art, quilting or dance, to more vocational courses in computers, culinary arts or truck-driving.

The ones who encounter Virginia Wilbur, and the other facilitators, Jane Jocelyn and Lee-Ann Allan, and coordinator Eileen Green, number between to 80 and 120 each year. These are the ones seeking either to earn a high school diploma or pass the five tests for GED (general educational development), the equivalent.

About 35 or 40 of them manage to graduate with their credentials from the program each May. They are part of what Wilbur says “feels like family.”

Wilbur’s role in the program is teaching classes in English, U.S. history and civics. Some classes have as few as two or three students.

Students enroll in the Adult Education program often with the single goal of getting credits for coursework. Wilbur and the other facilitators tend to help them learn a bit along the way, too.

“Virginia is our grandmother-type, and they come to appreciate that,” Maddocks said. “She has got many skills that work in ways beyond just getting the students through their courses and credits.”

Wilbur enjoys her role for many reasons.

“We can do a lot of one-on-one work,” Wilbur said. “And I just love teaching; I enjoy adult ed very much.

“I have just never burned out, I guess.”