A local teacher has been recognized for her efforts.
Laurie Smith is the director of the Medical and Emergency Career Academy at Lincoln High School. Students there learn the skills needed to become firefighters, EMTs, or criminal detention officers.
In July, the Association for Career and Technical Education named Smith the Arkansas CTE Teacher of the Year. Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis caught up with her over Zoom last week. She says her journey with career and technical education didn’t begin in the classroom, but out in the field, helping people as a first responder.
Smith: When I started out, I worked as an assistant fire marshal for Washington County, and I spent eight years there. At that same time, I worked at Central EMS as an EMT, and I was on my volunteer fire department. So my upbringing was in fire and EMS. And then, after I met my husband, who is a police officer, I kind of decided we both had really kind of crappy schedules as a police officer and in the fire service.
I was like, I want to go back into teaching. And so I continued on to finish up. I moved my fire science degree over into kinesiology and then ended up with kinesiology. And teaching science, or education and health science.
So whenever I did that, I taught at Farmington Middle School and Junior High for eight years. And then I just kind of wanted to go, like, I loved teaching health, but I just wanted to get back into helping replenish the pool of volunteer firefighters and police officers and stuff. So I kind of wanted to lean more into that.
I approached Lincoln School District, and I was like, hey, these classes exist on the Arkansas district course codes. I said, can we possibly make a program and just get this started and roll over here at Lincoln? And here’s what I can bring to the table. And so they said yes.
And that’s kind of where I ended up in teaching on the CTE side—going and teaching the medical courses, the firefighting courses. And then I also am kind of the director over the criminal justice program. So really it’s just leaning back into my roots of what I used to do when I was younger and then pairing my education license to be able to do both of them.
Travis: And what classes are you teaching specifically?
Smith: So we run Intro to Healthcare. That’s our foundational course that all kids take in anything in the medical field. Then we move on to our level two, which is medical terminology. And we offer that at the college level as well, so they do get college credit from NWACC currently for Medical Terminology. And then that rolls into Emergency Medical Responder. We also teach that concurrently, which means they’re getting college credit for that as well.
Their senior level, we offer the Patient Care Tech certification. So once they’ve completed all those levels, we let them test for Patient Care Tech so that they can take that and also go to work with a PCT license or certification. So those three are the ones that we do.
And then I also teach the Firefighter I course. The problem with Firefighter I is that you have to have a certain pool of candidates. And we only teach that when it makes. So if that year we only have two kids interested, we don’t put that class on that year. We just wait another year before we do that.
Travis: I wanted to go back to something you said a second ago. You said you wanted to replenish the pool of volunteer firefighters and volunteer EMTs. Is there currently a shortage?
Smith: I think so. I don’t know statistically exactly, but if you just look at our volunteer fire departments, it’s been something that’s been dwindling for a while. I get it—everybody’s busy. Volunteer firefighters aren’t out there getting a paycheck. They’re doing it on their own free time. So, as the world turns and as we get busier, it’s less likely that you’re going to find people to volunteer their time to get up and help other people in emergencies.
I would say that our numbers, they’re OK, but they could definitely be better. Back in the day- I say back in the day but several years ago, a couple decades ago, you had a bigger pool of people that wanted to help. It was easier because you had your local farmers out here who were on your volunteer departments. But as farms dry up and as people commute—driving from Lincoln to work in Fayetteville—they come home and don’t want to get up at 2 a.m. to go to a medical call. I think as the world turns, we’re just losing the ability to help people on our free time.
Travis: But we have people like you stimulating the youth and trying to draw those numbers back up. Congratulations on your award, CTE Teacher of the Year. That’s very exciting.
Smith: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Travis: Why did you apply?
Smith: Because I wanted the rest of the state to see what we’re doing here. It’s not about me. I’m not a title-y person. That doesn’t mean much to me. But if it gets them to look at the program and see the success of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it right, it draws attention to that program.
We model and pilot a lot of classes out of Lincoln High School. It’s one of those things where Lincoln High School is not really on the map. We’re not known for anything super crazy. Getting this award has drawn attention to the program, this high school, and what we’re doing here. It’s made it more valuable in other people’s eyes. It always is valuable in my eye.
But when people start looking at the program and they're like, oh, what do you do, it's opened up some other doors. Like, I'm currently now helping mentor, teach other medical teachers in our co-op out of Farmington. I was asked to do that as well. So now I'm able to put on professional development to help other medical teachers get just different content and set things up and show them how—like, things that I was successful at, things that I failed at, maybe things that worked and didn't work.
So we're able to, like, kind of expand that. Now, I will say that a lot of your CTE teachers kind of are on islands because they're—they are specialists in their area, right? They're not—we're not teaching with three other English teachers at our high school. You know, it's a specialized content. So it can kind of feel a little isolating.
So my goal is, you know, now that I've got this award, like, “oh, maybe she knows what she's doing, so maybe we can get her to help some other people.” So it's opened up doors to really help out this community of medical teachers in our area. And, we're emergency service pathways. There's lots of different avenues, but it's opened those doors to be able to be more unified to where we can really get behind and feel like we have a solid program and then share that with other school districts so that they can have that.
Travis: As those doors open within the Lincoln Consolidated School District, how would you like to see Lincoln's CTE program grow?
Smith: I know that we have toyed around with the ability to start trying to figure out how to do more opportunities virtually. We sit in a lot of classes that maybe you don't really need to be in the middle of the classroom, right? Maybe they could sit in another school district and attend by Zoom. So we're toying around with trying to figure out how to do a better setup for a Zoom class and get our schedules really lined up to where when we have those skills days, those skills days, they gotta be here.
They gotta be here, or they gotta be—like, we just did a skills day in the criminal justice program at the Washington County Courthouse. And so on that day, they had to be at the Washington County Courthouse to do courtroom testimony. So when they—you know, those are days that they—we know that they have to be in house. And so as we get everything solidified along the way, and we can isolate those days of when they have to be here, our next goal is to be able to branch out to help other schools.
It's not easy to find someone who can do a firefighting class and also has an ADE license to teach. So as we have those people—like our criminal justice instructor also teaches for the state. He has a technical permit to teach for ADE, but he's also a police officer. So finding those people and then using them to the best of their ability, and then being able to share resources with other schools, I think is kind of the—it's where it's growing. So being able to figure out how to tap into those virtual opportunities, I think is important.
Travis: Is the four-day school week benefiting your program at all?
Smith: I think it is because it's benefiting me, and I'm so much happier. Like, you know, I've had offers of “come help us at our school” or, we'd like, you know, like job offers and other—and honestly, it is one of the things that keeps me here. I love Lincoln. I'm actually an alumni of Lincoln, so that also keeps me here. I feel like God definitely put me in this school district to keep it going and give these kids some opportunities because it is a small, low-income rural school district. It's giving these kids opportunities to be able to tap into finding out where they're, how they're going to go into their careers and how they're going to afford a future. And, you know, and saving up.
Some of those kiddos that are just kind of bouncing around, it gives them a place to fit in, and it gives them a career. And then they can start their lives right out of high school. And so I think that is so valuable. You know, I was kind of—I went to college route right after high school, but I felt like I kind of bounced around. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I didn't really have anybody kind of helping me out.
Now when I get those text messages of, like, “Miss Smith, I got this job,” and like, “I'm working over here now.” So that's really cool to see that they're already drawing a salary, you know, and they're even earning retirement at 18, 19 years old. They're already drawing out of that. And so that's so cool to be able to see that. And so I think the four-day though for my mental health is fabulous. And it's one of the things I love about Lincoln.
Travis: And now you're up for CTE Region 4 Teacher of the Year.
Smith: Yeah. So in April, I think it's in April of this coming year, we—all of the state CTE teachers- will compete against each other for the regional. Then whoever wins out of that, then we will compete nationally. So, obviously we have to bring it home to Arkansas,
I gotta really be on top of my game and put myself together and really hone in on, like, practicing for it and stuff. Really it's just telling about what you do. Like, when you do the panel interviews and stuff, you know, I think if you're passionate about what you do, it just kind of comes out.
I don't have to put on a show. This is what I do. This is what I love. And so I just tell them about what I love and do every day. And hopefully it just comes through in the right way.
Travis: So yeah, that passion is shining through currently. It's awesome. Thank you for representing our state so well.
Smith: Yeah, I think that, you know, people often ask me how did I get all this started? And I think it's worth mentioning, you know, to whoever's listening that really the biggest part of running these programs is having an administration that trusts your employees, right?
So I watch other schools that are like, “oh, we could never do that at our school district.” And it's unfortunate because maybe their admin wants them to run a certain way or, you know, they're not allowed to think outside of the box. And I think in this day and age, in education, we really have to think outside of the box.
These students are not the students of my day. They're in a different time of the world where it's just—they operate on a very different—it's not the traditional classrooms. It's not the—they don't want to be well-rounded. They want to hone in and learn skills that are applicable to what they want to do in life. And so that's why I think this program works so well.
I'm not fighting the, “oh, well, we have to do this because you need to know it” and then you don't ever really use it type of thing. But I'm like, you need to know this because you're going to do it every day for work. And so that helps.
But I think, honestly, my biggest takeaway is that my administration here at Lincoln, from the superintendent to my principal, has been like, “you're the expert, do what you think you need to do, and then, like, let us know how we can support that.” That's been the best part of starting these types of programs, is that we really have to trust our teachers.
We have to trust them that, you know, that they're not going to set us up for failure. You know, they're doing the best they can and give them a little bit of grace and leniency. You know, sometimes my classes had—when I first started out, I had a class of four, and I'm like, “oh, this looks really bad.”
Schools don't like low class numbers, right? They want you to have a class of 20. But it took that class of four to—the next year, I had 15 in that class. So it's like the growth—you have to have a little bit of growing pains to get there. But once you get there, it's like it just works. And so I think having a really good admin, I can't brag on them enough here at Lincoln, because that's been the ability for me to, like, be able to succeed here.
That was Laurie Smith, the Arkansas Career and Technical Education Teacher of the Year, speaking with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis. Jack produces his stories in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio One.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
