Whiteside enters 8th year at helm of Community Education

New Richland resident Macy Whiteside is the current Community Education Director for NRHEG. If she is not busy writing grants, she is working on the Panther Publication. She is also in charge of four different Facebook pages in relation to NRHEG district. Whiteside earned her master’s in educational leadership from MSU Mankato with a major in psychology and a minor in biology.

 

Her mission statement on the district website reads: “I am the Community Education Director for NRHEG Public Schools and I am thrilled to work with people of all age ranges by hosting, organizing, creating, and teaching various types of recreation and enrichment classes for our community in order to promote and encourage lifelong learning.” Whiteside says about her help in community education, “We fill in some gaps the school can’t, handling the before school and after school programs.”

 

Originally from Wisconsin, she moved here when she was in elementary school with her father, Rick Kissling, then manager of an Arabian Horse farm; he has since become a Waseca local. Her mother, Janice Crosby, used to work for Delta out of Waseca, but Whiteside is the first to say, “I don’t have a lot of family here locally.” Whiteside and her husband Jon have a 14-year-old son Levi, who attends NRHEG secondary, and a daughter Kendall, 10, who goes to elementary school in Ellendale. She and her family have two horses and two dogs on a small farm not far from New Richland. When she isn’t working, her hobbies include watching youth football, wrestling, baseball, softball, and going horseback riding. She will also help teach kids things like T-ball, coach pitch, art club, Lego club and kickball, but that’s for third grade and under.

 

In the area since 2017, this will be her eighth year as community education director. Of the things that have happened in that time, she says one of her favorites is the recent renovation work at the Ellendale school; changes there have given children new equipment and state-of-the-art technology to help with their learning. She has many goals when it comes to community education. Said Whiteside, “We want to reach out to as many people as we can, enabling people of all ages to use the school.” An expanding, vibrant program requires instructors, she points out. “I am always looking for instructors, as many as there are, we will take them to run a class or instruct a class. Any help is encouraged.”

 

Whiteside invites anyone interested in teaching a class or getting involved in community education, or to advertise NRHEG school related activities in her Panther Publication. Contact her via email at mwhiteside@nrheg.k12.mn.us.