Shayne Evans got caught in the shuffle when his family moved from Florida to Ellijay. Before the journey north, he was scheduled to graduate high school in the Sunshine State in 2020 through an accelerated program.
However, the accelerated program was conducted at a different school, with options of attending there or doing work from home. And the online classes from home, which Shayne was completing, required a once-a-month meeting at the school with the program. The COVID pandemic shut down most travel in Florida, and he missed the required meetings and was terminated from the program.
In Ellijay, Shayne, 22, heard about the GED (General Education Diploma) classes offered at the Gilmer Learning Center and after a year’s work has attained his GED. Math was the final barrier.
“I passed all the other tests except math, it was the last one,” he said recently. “I studied a little for the other tests, but I was pretty confident about them. My best subjects were reading and language arts. I got the other subjects out of the way right away — social studies, language arts and science. But math has always been a struggle.”
Dita Paukert, the lead teacher at the learning center, said Shayne’s situation was not unlike that of other GED students.
“Shayne, like many of our students, sometimes found it hard to believe he had the ability to learn enough to pass the GED test,” she noted.
“Often, helping people believe they can do this is as important a part of what we do as the teaching itself. Shayne especially wondered whether he was able to learn math. If you think you can’t learn math, it gets that much more difficult to learn math. What was great about Shayne, though, is that he let me push him to do the work, which gave him the chance to realize, ‘Hey, I can do this.’”
Shayne’s father, Ted Evans, pointed to the influence of a good teacher.
“Dita brought him up to speed, and I commend her for that,” he said.
Shayne took the math portion of the test at Chattahoochee Tech in Jasper, where there were a lot of other people also taking that section, he said.
“I was super happy to pass the math!” he exclaimed. “Ms. Paukert was willing to deal with me and all my struggles.”
What does the future hold for Shayne Evans?
“I’m looking around online at cybersecurity and AI (artificial intelligence),” he shared. “Anything with computers seems to be booming right now.”
The Adult Learning Center is located at 30 Southside Church Street in Ellijay, next door to the Gilmer County Health Department. Center hours are variable Monday through Thursday. To call or text for an appointment, dial 706-669-6611.