By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — A science teacher at Bedford Middle School described as creative, with a bit of moxie, was honored as Westport’s 2023 Teacher of the Year at the Board of Education’s Tuesday meeting.

Liz Smith, selected from among nine nominees, will represent the district in the state’s Teacher of the Year recognition program this fall. The teacher selected for that honor will ultimately vie for the National Teacher of the Year title.

Smith has been with the local school district since 2006. She told school board members and others Tuesday that a fire drill was triggered during her “less than perfect” practice lesson during her interview for the job 17 years ago.

“You can’t control everything,” she said. “… You just try to go with it.”

That has been her go-to advice, Smith said, to make sure students know that they are well-cared for and respected, and that mistakes aren’t the end of the world but an opportunity to learn and correct.

Smith said she sticks to routines, saying they help students focus on what matters. She calls grades a snapshot in time and that the real aim is to help students love learning.

Bedford Principal Adam Rosen said Smith is a master educator who pours her heart and soul into her profession.

In addition to being very perceptive and persuasive, Smith has a knack for winning unique accolades from colleagues, Rosen added.

At a traditional last-day-of-school activity at Bedford, teachers hold a Paper Plate Award ceremony. Smith won awards from fellow teachers as the one they would “most want to be stranded on a desert island with” and “best person to be quarantined with,” among others.

During the nomination process, one colleague said Smith teaches first and foremost with her heart, district officials said.

“As a sixth-grade teacher she is uncannily attuned to students’ emotional as well as academic needs,” the teacher is quoted in nominating Smith. “Her classroom is a safe space for everyone … There is nothing you can’t approach her about and there is nothing she doesn’t have a comforting word and solution for.”

Whether facilitating curriculum initiatives or leading her team of core teachers, Smith has been a leader from day one, another colleague said.

Smith earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology and psychology from Liverpool University in Liverpool, England. She had a career in sales and management at Kraft Foods and also earned a Higher Education Diploma from the McTimoney College of Chiropractic before moving to the United States, where she eventually enrolled in a Teacher Preparation Program at Yale University.

Assistant Supt. John Bayers said teachers in the district coordinate the Teacher of the Year nomination process and former honorees ultimately settle on a winner in the late spring.

For the past two years during COVID, the entire teaching staff was collectively honored as a tribute to teaching during a pandemic.

Since the awards program was initiated in 1952, four state Teachers of the Year have gone on to receive the national title. The latest was Jahana Hayes in 2016. Then a Waterbury history teacher, Hayes is now a U.S. congresswoman representing Connecticut’s 5th District.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.