Kara Smith, Cd'A teacher of the year

She was starting to feel a little like Leonardo DiCaprio —always nominated for that big award, but never winning.

That’s how Kara Smith, a speech and debate teacher at Lake City High School, describes her five total nominations for Teacher of the Year. She’s got one on Leonardo, though: In May, Smith was named this year’s overall Teacher of the Year for the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Every year, teachers from different schools are nominated for the honor by their colleagues. One teacher is chosen at each level — elementary, middle and high school — and from those, a single teacher is named district Teacher of the Year.

Finally, the Idaho Teacher of the Year is chosen from among the districts’ nominees by a selection committee representing the state education leaders and lawmakers.

Smith says she wasn’t expecting to win, especially because the other people who teach with her in this district are very talented.

“I feel like I work hard and I feel like what I do speaks for itself,” Smith says. “But to have other people recognize it feels good, too.”

Ask any of her students, Smith says, and they’ll say she’s not like other teachers. She can be blunt and intense, but she also cares deeply about her students and values her individual connections with them. More than that, she doesn’t treat them like kids — she just treats them like people. That resonates with her students.

“My teaching philosophy is more about teaching people than it is about teaching speech or debate,” she says. “It’s about knowing who they are, them knowing who they are, how to approach different issues. ... They’re great young people and they need to know that adults see that in them as well.”

She didn’t set out to be a speech and debate teacher, though. Actually, it was sort of an accident. In college to become an English teacher, she had to choose a minor to make herself more marketable.

She had always liked public speaking, so communications seemed like the obvious choice. She did her student teaching at Lake City High School, where she was placed in an English classroom and a speech classroom. When the speech teacher for whom she’d done her student teaching retired, Smith applied for the job and landed it.

Now she’s in her 17th year of teaching, almost all of those years spent at Lake City High School. She says she loves watching her students develop as speakers — especially her debate students, many of whom she’ll get to know over the course of four years.

“It’s so hard for them at that age to see that they have unique and great qualities that they can take into the world,” she says. “They don’t know who to be yet, and my classroom is a super welcoming atmosphere.”

Teaching communications is more personal than other subjects, Smith says. When students stand up to give a speech, they’re also giving a little part of themselves, putting their personal twist on the subject.

“While I watch the speeches, I learn about my students,” she says. “The same speech is given by 30 kids in the classroom, but each speech is going to be totally different because each of them is totally different.”

Smith also has a special relationship with her debate students, one that extends beyond the classroom. She spends hours coaching them outside of school and accompanies them to tournaments, locally and in other parts of the country. When her seniors graduate, she says, she cries, almost as if her own kids are going away to college.

“Those kids are my family,” she says. “I’m their mom, I’m their sister, I’m their friend, I’m all these things. I know so much about them. They come to me with their problems and their issues because we have built this relationship. That’s so special.”

To keep up with her students, Smith says, she has to keep up with pop culture. She doesn’t like it when she doesn’t recognize what her students are talking about, be it books, movies or music. She wants to know their reference points, so she makes an effort to learn about whatever engages them. Sometimes, that means reading the “Divergent” series or listening to Taylor Swift.

“That keeps me young and fresh, even though I’ve been teaching for 17 years. I’m willing to do that extra work,” Smith says. “Even though I’m teaching the same age group all the time, they’re changing all the time, because the world is changing. I need to keep up.”

Smith feels strongly that many of her students will go on to make a difference in the world — and now they know they have a voice to do just that. It’s empowering for her students and deeply satisfying for her.

She genuinely loves teenagers, she says, and she wants them to see all of their own potential. Above all, she wants to know who her students really are, deep down, and she wants them to be genuine.

“So many people are fake and they’re pretending,” Smith says. “They’re doing what they think other people want them to do instead of being who they are. I hope that in my classroom, at least, they feel safe to be who they really are.”

Kaye Thornbrugh is a journalist student working with the Coeur d’Alene School District’s communications department.