A Valpo Life In the Spotlight: Rachel Smith

A Valpo Life In the Spotlight: Rachel Smith

There are all kinds of stories about how people get into a career. For some, they enter a field by coincidence or circumstance, others look for pay, but some follow and fulfill lifelong passions like Saylor Elementary School’s Rachel Smith. A second-grade teacher, Smith wanted to be a teacher even back when she was in elementary school.

The Valparaiso native never envisioned herself as anything other than a teacher. As a kid, she would “play teacher” and home and during recess. Her lifelong fantasies became reality after she earned a degree in Elementary Education from Indiana University Bloomington.

“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” said Smith. “I used to force my brother to play school with me when we were younger. He liked video games, so the only way I could get him to play with me was to take ‘video game field trips.’”

Early mornings and corralling 7 and 8-year-olds all day never makes for an easy day at work, but Smith loves it regardless. It offers her a chance to make a difference in kids’ lives and help them become better people and students down the road.

“Saylor is the perfect fit for me,” she said. “I love everyone that I work with and I love my class, so it’s been going well. This is my second year there.”

Watching the kids in her class grow and learn every day is her favorite part of the job. Part of that is helping more skeptical students start to love learning and turn into bundles of curiosity.

“My favorite thing is seeing the progress that the kids make, where they start and then at the end of the year after they’ve achieved more and more,” explained Smith. “I like them seeing everything they’ve learned and their excitement to learn, those kids that have that curiosity and eagerness to learn new things.”

Smith knows that age group she teaches are not coming into her classroom just for book learning, getting an education means growing as a person and developing core values that are essential to future success.

“I think that showing them how to work hard and how to meet their goals is a good thing,” she said. “Obviously I want them to learn, but I want them to learn for themselves too, because if they don’t have that drive and desire as they get older, they won’t be as successful.”

As a lifelong dream, passion, and now career, teaching is more than just a job for Smith. It’s a core part of who she is as a person.

“Teaching really is where I get a lot of my confidence,” she said. “Growing up I wasn’t very confident, but with teaching I am because I know that it’s something I’m successful in and I can see my students grow. Teaching is a big part of me, next to being a mom.”

Though she currently calls Valparaiso home, Smith also lived in California for three and a half years. After having a daughter with her husband, Smith moved back to Valpo after falling in love with it through repeated visits to her family still in the Region.

“Every time we’d come and visit, we fell more and more in love,” said Smith. “Seeing it as an adult and remembering what it was like to grow up here made us want our kids to grow up here too. And we love the downtown area, they’ve really built it up since I was younger. We can just go without any plans and spend a whole afternoon there.”

When she is not teaching, Smith coaches cross-country at Morgan Township High School and loves to spend time with her family. Smith and her husband’s daughter, Charlotte, just turned two and they are expecting another daughter, Olivia, in June.