Forthcoming documentary to celebrate the life of early-childhood advocate Anna Jo Garcia Haynes

For nearly 60 years, Anna Jo Garcia Haynes has championed early-childhood education in Colorado. Now, her inspiring story is being told in a documentary film commissioned by the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver and the MSU Denver Foundation.

“She is an icon,” said Elizabeth Hinde, Ph.D., dean of the School of Education. “Since the 1960s, Anna Jo has been at the forefront of advocating for children and families.”

The documentary, titled “A Life of Advocacy,” is set to premiere June 6 and will be used in a campaign to fund an endowment in her name to support MSU Denver’s Early Childhood Education program. After the premiere, the School of Education will concentrate on building an even stronger Early Childhood Education program to help get much-needed teachers in the pipeline to support the state’s newly implemented universal pre-k program.

“We’ll offer classes in advocacy and policy and host institutes and other learning opportunities where people can learn from leading experts about early-childhood education and how to advocate for it, from talking to Congress to talking to their next-door neighbor,” Hinde said.

Haynes was a young mother whose daughter attended a preschool that was run by Bea Romer, whose husband, Roy Romer, would go on to become governor of Colorado. When the federal government launched the Head Start program to serve disadvantaged children, Bea Romer asked Haynes to help establish the program in their state. “Long story short, Anna Jo and Bea Romer brought Head Start to Colorado in 1965,” Hinde said.

“Anna Jo has been involved in everything from carrying picket signs to being appointed to serve on commissions and other national and statewide groups,” Hinde said. “She has even testified before Congress.” Haynes went on to found the Montessori-inspired Mile High Early Learning Centers, which she led for four decades.

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Her work was recognized in 2021, when the Colorado General Assembly passed the Anna Jo Garcia Haynes Early Childhood Act, which established universal pre-K education in the state and created the Department of Early Childhood. The legislation is helping drive demand for preschool teachers. At MSU Denver, the second-largest producer of teachers in the state, about 200 students are in the early-childhood education pipeline, Hinde said.

Haynes has served on the School of Education’s advisory board since the school was created in 2014. A couple of years ago, she mentioned to Hinde that people had suggested that she do something to preserve her legacy and keep the momentum for early-childhood education going.

That inspired Hinde and friends of Haynes to launch the Anna Jo Garcia Haynes Legacy Project, together with an endowment that was funded with an initial gift of $100,000. “My own faculty members are incredibly grateful to Anna Jo,” Hinde said. “They’ve had her visit their classes and meet the students. It’s very important that the next generation knows how to advocate, how to champion early childhood.”

As part of the project, a local media-production company, Dope Mom Life, was hired to create a documentary about Haynes’ life. In researching the film, they learned Haynes had kept many boxes with records and mementos from her career, which are being archived with the help of a historian.

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Alexandria Kelly, an MSU Denver senior majoring in Early Childhood Education who is student-teaching at a Denver elementary school, was drawn to the field while working at a Montessori school during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The first time I came across Anna Jo was when one of my classmates worked at one of her facilities,” she said. “She was a die-hard Anna Jo fan.”

Kelly has high praise for MSU’s Denver’s Early Childhood Education program and its instructors, especially Associate Professor Rosemarie Allen, Ed.D., who is friends with Haynes. “Being so close with Dr. Allen, I got a feel for how powerful the program is and how far I can go within it,” she said.

Kelly was surprised to learn her parents, who have worked with Denver’s young people, knew Haynes and her work. Her father runs a nonprofit organization to keep inner-city kids out of gangs, and her mother is a retired Denver Public Schools teacher.

“It was really wholesome to know about that and that my parents had connections with her as well,” she said. “It was a full circle to come back to me being in the ECE program.”