Courtney Smith, the Teacher of the Year Award Winner, is a key member of the English department here at LTHS due to her unique and insightful teaching methods.
Smith is currently in her 19th year of teaching, and 6th year of teaching at LTHS. In her 19 years of teaching she has taught “all levels of high school students” in a variety of subjects such as “9th grade english, english 3, english 3 honors, film and video, film production 2, Ib social cultural anthropology, english 1, broadcast, ap literature, english 4, and ap research”.
One of the reasons Smith loves teaching English, but literature in particular is because “it’s not about the plot of the book, it’s about the life lessons we take away and relating that to real life conversations”.
“So, my story’s kind of interesting because I did not go to school for teaching,” Smith said. In college, she got a major in creative writing and a minor in film, hoping to be a screenwriter for television in the future. However, before going to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a screenwriter, she contacted her high school theater director for a letter of recommendation, and he asked Smith to call her. He asked Smith if she would be interested in being a high school theater teacher, and at the time she “had no money saved up” so she thought she could go and teach for a couple of years before pursuing her dream in Los Angeles. She ended up getting the job, teaching at the high school she went to. “Over those couple of years I just fell in love with teaching and didn’t want to go to LA anymore”, Smith said.
With the introduction of technology and Ai into education in recent years, teachers may have difficult times incorporating technology into lesson plans while still keeping students engaged. “I think my strongest skill is adaptability and changing with times”, Smith says. Smith makes sure that students are engaged in the classroom by implementing project based and inquiry learning. Smith loves giving out project based learning assignments to students because “the final product is so open-ended and the student can incorporate their interests and their passion”.
“One thing that I think is necessary to be a good teacher that is often overlooked is involvement in the school as a whole”. Mrs. Smith is an IC intern this year, which stands for Instructional Coach Intern. In the future, Mrs. Smith hopes to become an Instructional Coach within the English department at LTHS.
Outside of school, Smith expands on her writing and is currently working on a novel for the past four years about a fantasy- dystopian fiction story about an agency that controls all of the people on earth.
