Feature News Leader, Fremont, NC

By Sarah A. Wise
NL Staff Writer
   Beverly Ely Smith is not your average teacher. Though she has been in the classroom working with students for 16 years, she has only been a certified teacher for the past six.
   Beverly, who was named Teacher of the Year at Northeast Elementary School, began her career as a teacher assistant at North Drive School in Goldsboro. While she enjoyed her work there, she knew deep down that she wanted to do something more for the students who entered her classroom.
“I always worked in good classrooms,” she said. “But I had so many ideas; I knew I wanted to lead.”
   So Beverly decided to go back to school for her teaching licensure. She attended Barton College in Wilson, participating in a weekend program. Beverly did all her student teaching in Wayne County, and then stayed with the system after earning her licensure.
The decision to move to the front of the classroom, she said, was something she always felt she’d do.
“I knew that’s what I wanted to,” she said. “I had all of these ideas, and I needed my own classroom to spread my wings as an educator.”
   Beverly said she feels kind of like a pioneer, because she was one of the first in Wayne County to make the move from teacher assistant to teacher. She said that the school system was very good to her, because they allowed her to trade her years in as an assistant for credit toward her teaching career. Two years of working as an assistant credited her one year of classroom experience, so instead of starting over as a first-year teacher, she was credited with five years of experience for her decade as an assistant.
“I really feel like I opened the door for other teacher assistants to make the transition,” she said.
   And that’s a good thing for students and staff, she added, because in her opinion, former assistants make some of the best teachers. They know how to handle the classroom, and they also understand how to make their own assistants a part of the class.
“They work just as hard as I do,” she said, “and they know what to expect coming in.”
   Four years ago, Beverly came to Northeast Elementary. While many teachers in the area are natives of northern Wayne County, Beverly is still relatively new to the area.
   Beverly moved to Goldsboro when she married her husband Bobby, who is from the eastern part of the county. But she grew up a military kid, spending time in the mountains of North Carolina, and attending high school in Myrtle Beach. But her husband, she said, is a hometown kind of guy.
“When you marry a man from here, you know he plans on staying here,” she said. “And that’s a good thing. This is a really nice area.”
Bobby and Beverly also have two children, who have stayed in the area. Their daughter Amber Lund, 25, is a nurse at O’Berry Center, and their son Brodie, 19, attends Wayne Community College.
   Beverly said that her relative unfamiliarity with the area is what made being awarded Teacher of the Year even more rewarding.
“I got a note in my box saying that I’d won,” she said. “And I went to Mr. Yelverton, our assistant principal, and said that there must have been a mistake.”
   She said that because she isn’t from the area, and she hasn’t been working at the school very long, she was taken aback by the honor.
“I haven’t known these ladies very long, so to be Teacher of the Year after just four years, that meant a lot to me. That meant more than the county-wide competition to me,” she said.
   When she isn’t in the classroom, the military kid in Beverly comes out, and she spends much of her free time traveling. She said she recently returned from a trip to Alaska, and was amazed by the state.
“We spent 15 days there, and the warmest it every got was in the mid-fifties,” she said. “It was amazing, really beautiful, and they had fourteen-hour days. It’s definitely somewhere I’d like to visit but I couldn’t live there.”
   Beverly said she also likes to tell her students that she likes to “play in the dirt” when she isn’t at work. She is an avid gardener, growing flowers, vegetables, and fruit at her home.
“I do a lot of canning and freezing fruits and vegetables in the summer,” she said. “It takes up a lot of my time, but I enjoy being outside and making things grow.”
   She also goes to bluegrass festivals around the area, and enjoys scrapbooking.
   With nine years of teaching to her credit, Beverly likely has many more years ahead of her in the classroom, something she looks forward to. Though she has mainly taught second and first graders during her career, she said she wouldn’t mind working with some of the higher grades in elementary school.
“I think I’d rather go up than down,” she said. “There’s more of a challenge for me, working with the older kids.”
   But no matter what grade she teaches, Beverly is sure to continue spreading her wings as she educates.