Lincoln Academy Communications Director Jenny Mayher stands in her office surrounded by recent issues of the Aerie alumni magazine, the production and design of which she supervises. Mayher, of Newcastle, also teaches yearbook and is the faculty advisor for student council and The Eagles Talon, the student newspaper. (Dylan Burmeister photo)
If one needs something at Lincoln Academy, chances are Communications Director Jenny Mayher can help.
After 11 years on the job, Mayher, of Newcastle, has come to know hundreds of students, parents, and faculty. At the center of Mayher’s work, a focus on hard work and striving for excellence drives her days.
Mayher was surrounded by education as a child, growing up on the campus of Hackley School, a private K-12 school in Tarrytown, N.Y., where her parents worked as teachers. The family lived in faculty housing during the year and spent their summers in Maine.
“(My parents) never owned a house in New York, so Maine was our real home,” she said. “We would pack the car the night before leaving, and the car was literally running at 2:30 when school got out for every single vacation.”
Growing up on a school campus was “sort of like paradise,” instilling both a love of learning and a commitment to diligence, Mayher said.
“I got a pretty early sense that when I worked hard, there were the good grades, but also the sense that I had learned something,” she said. “I learned to show up. The world is run by people who show up, and so showing up and working hard, and then the world says yes, and then you got to show up for something cooler and (keep) working hard, and it keeps going.”
After graduating from Hackley, Mayher decided to take a gap year before college. During that year, she lived with a cousin in Boston and worked retail jobs to make a living.
“I was making $7.50 an hour, and by the end of that year, I really understood why I wanted an education, and I showed up at college hungry for an education instead of being burned out,” she said.
Mayher also spent two months working for the nonprofit Island Ventures in the Philippines, which, she said, was “something I always had dreamed about.” The nonprofit constructed community centers to be used as preschools and helped families access childhood education.
While studying anthropology at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., Mayher became interested in applying theories of anthropology to domestic issues. She focused her studies on the cultural impacts of poverty and the effects it and education have on institutions and society. To complete her studies, Mayher wrote an undergraduate thesis about a homeless shelter in Ellsworth where she had volunteered.
“It was (again) that theme of using anthropology to look at local issues rather than things in faraway places,” said Mayher.
She met her now-husband Garrett “Boo” Martin in 1995 while doing a one-year internship at a school in Colorado after graduating from college.
“Boo and I showed up on the same day to do our internship, and we’re both driving the same make and model car,” Mayher said.
The couple married in 1997. Mayher returned to college to earn her master’s degree in anthropology and education from Columbia University, graduating in 1999.
She and Martin moved to Jackson, Miss., for Martin’s job at the time. The move allowed Martin to connect with his southern roots, while Mayher was at home with their first child, Essie, who was born in Mississippi in 1999.
Mayher described it as “the most challenging” of all the places she lived.
“I didn’t know anybody, and I was lonely,” she said. “I had a newborn baby, which put me at the whims of the southern culture because I was pushing a baby in a stroller through our neighborhood trying to make friends.
“It was a true cultural immersion in a way that I think if I’d gone to an office job might have been different,” Mayher said. “Nuclear families are much tighter in the South, and nobody leaves, and few people move in,” she said. “They really wondered why I was there, they would ask, ‘Why are you having your baby so far from your mama?”
Despite the culture shock, Mayher recalls the time as one of intense education.
“It helped me understand this country better, and it helped me understand how values and culture are different,” she said.
She pointed to differences in humor as an example.
“Irony is not really a thing in the south, and so I was consistently offending people by just being ironic,” Mayher said. “People never really understood my sense of humor.”
After four years in Mississippi, the family moved to Newcastle in 2003 and hasn’t left since. Mayher worked on several volunteer campaigns and for Skidompha Public Library until her two children were a bit older, when she was hired as the inaugural communications director at LA.
Both of her children attended LA, and with Martin’s position as LA’s cross country coach, there was a time when all four family members were at the high school each day.
“I had a few mandates when I started,” Mayher said. “Mostly to make sure families know what’s happening at LA, and to make sure we have effective communication. We don’t want to be a black box.”
Her work today consists of writing press releases about campus goings-on, running the LA website, taking photos and covering school events, and advising and teaching a growing number of clubs and classes. Mayher now teaches yearbook and is the faculty advisor for student council and The Eagle’s Talon newspaper. She also helps organize LA’s community meetings, a weekly assembly that features presentations, speeches, and school spirit activities.
“It’s hard to run an event for 600 people every week and make it engaging, but also purposeful,” she said. “I don’t think it’s perfect, but I hope it continues to grow.”
Mayher said that LA’s independent school model is a welcome contrast to the private school she attended.
“I believe this is a remarkable school,” Mayher said. “The core of that is this nutty town-academy model – an independent school that serves a public purpose. At Hackley there was a lot of Wall Street money and rich kids; I was just the faculty kid. And (here), this independent school model serves a population that just lives here and is wildly socioeconomically diverse.”
Mayher spends every day interacting with teenagers, which she says is “incredibly fulfilling.”
“It sounds cheesy, but it just makes my heart sing when I watch kids graduate, and I know they’re ready for the next step, especially if it’s kids I knew at some point and I’ve gotten to see their growth,” she said. “It’s messy and it’s hard, too.”
One of the most difficult parts of her job is pushing students to set high standards for themselves.
“The kids come in and a lot of times they have an attitude of ‘Yeah, it’s good enough,” Mayher said. “Getting kids to go from good enough to wanting something to be great isn’t always easy, and you don’t want to do it for them. As an educator, that’s always one of my goals is to help kids see for themselves, and to (have them see) the feedback loop of how good it feels to be part of something that’s excellent. If you can help them understand what feels good about doing something hard and having a result, having improvement, producing something you’re proud of, that’s a life lesson.”
Excellence, hard work, and creating community are the values that have driven her whole life and what she hopes she can instill in others, Mayher said.
“That’s my way of making a difference in the world, because you just don’t know where those ripples go,” Mayher said. “If you send a bunch of young people out in the world who have those values instilled in them, and they can live happy and purposeful lives, the world becomes a better place.”
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