Golden Apple Award: Marea Smith

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Marea Smith teaches first grade at Steiner Elementary in Portales Municipal Schools. Selection team members noted Smith’s remarkable depth of content knowledge across all areas, as well as her use of multiple approaches to keeping students engaged in learning. In her application, Smith described a variety of methods she uses to continually gauge student learning.

Her expertise in this led to her being asked to develop math assessment strategies for the school. She also uses classroom instruction strategies for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), in which she is certified. The bottom line for the selection team’s assessment – “Wow!”

“Every year I organize a Thanksgiving feast for my students and their families," said Smith. "My students and I prepare every dish from scratch in the classroom. This year we decorated with turkey luminarias and handwritten statements of blessings for which we are grateful. At the feast my students presented Thanksgiving jokes in pairs, I shared the turkey’s wishbone with a student whose father was deployed in Iraq and shared a moment of silence with my students and their guests. Academically, my students learned about recipes, following directions and the first Thanksgiving, but more important I believe are the implicit lessons of taking risks, sharing what we have spending time with loved ones, taking pride in a job well done, expressing our blessings and reaching out to share the concerns of others.”