I Loved Being a Student
Education has always had a central place in Elaine Smith's life. For a long time, it was the education of others around her. She watched her husband complete his Ph.D. (he now teaches French literature and film at UNCG). She watched her three sons all finish their college educations. And she spent 16 and a half years in elementary classrooms as a teacher's assistant.
When her youngest son graduated from college, it was her turn. Returning to school at UNCG as an adult student was a way to return to the elementary classroom she loved, not as an assistant, but as the teacher. Before she was through, she completed not only her four-year undergraduate degree (1990), but also a Masters in Education (1994) in the evenings after she had begun to teach.. She is starting her 10th year as a fifth (and sometimes third) grade teacher with the Guilford County Schools.
When Elaine began at UNCG in l986, she had only 12 hours of college credit, some from Palm Beach Junior College as an expectant mother, and some from evening courses she had taken while working ("I felt I was getting nowhere" a course at a time, she recalls). She remembers feeling very nervous before she began her first semester, coming to campus before classes started to learn her way around.
Her years as a teaching assistant had shown her that she "could handle the classroom [her]self," but she still had lots to learn in her field. "It's not like I knew everything," she laughs; UNCG's teacher program provided valuable insights into curriculum, planning, and grading. The education courses she took were "wonderful," she says.
Her program included much more than professional training. She valued all her liberal arts requirements--art history, Greek mythology, and math, for example. "I appreciated things I wouldn't have thought to take when younger," she reflects.
Sciences were a challenge. Because teachers have to know lots of science, Elaine took chemistry, biology, and physics. When she felt intimidated in chemistry lab, she had to "talk to [her]self" to build her confidence: "I'm going to treat this like cooking," she told herself, "it's going to be like following a recipe." "I got through it pretty well," she remembers.
She now tries to pass along to her students some of the things she found so valuable in her own education--her love of mythology and art, for example. The rewards come back when she hears the enthusiasm children catch from her. "Look," exclaimed a fifth-grader excitedly on a field trip to the National Gallery in Washington, DC, "it's a Giacometti!" Elaine knew that without the discussions in her classroom and the poster on her wall, no young child from an disadvantaged background would be likely to identify such a work by a twentieth century European sculptor.
Elaine looks back with satisfaction on other rewards of being in school besides the professional ones: It "kept me young," she says, "rushing up stairs to class like I was 18" and keeping up with the demands of the hectic academic schedule.
To adults wondering whether it's too late to start training for a career in which there will only be a limited number of years on the job, Elaine says, "don't hesitate." Coming to school is a "continually rewarding process." She names benefits like "understanding things better," being "more involved in things," being "more confident," and being willing to tackle new things like learning to use the computer in her school classroom (she left UNCG just before computers were a regular feature of university course work).
The words she uses to describe her experiences as a student and teacher are similar: "joy" and "pleasure." Of her experiences at UNCG, she says, "I loved being a student . . . there is lots of pleasure in being a student." And as a teacher, "I really love being in the classroom . . . it is a joy to teach children and see them succeed. . . . I love to bring to kids the things I love."
The children of Greensboro are fortunate that education was and is so important to Elaine Smith.
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Page updated: 06-May-2009
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