New year, new challenges, new friends, new classes, and new teachers. For some, the unknown can be a scary experience, but this is not a new experience for Mrs. Erin Smart, our new GT Resource Teacher.

Mrs. Smart went to Western Maryland College in Westminster for her undergraduate degree (which then became McDaniel College), and for her graduate degree, she went to Loyola University. In her free time, she likes to partake in photography, play the guitar, sing, cook, and she is an avid reader. She is a big fan of religious music and has been taking comfort in it with all the hecticness of the new school year. She is a big fan of action movies, but doesn’t like or watch movies where a dog dies. Her favorite movie to date is the 1960’s version of “The Italian Job.” Her favorite series is the ”Lord Of The Rings” books. She is bilingual and has been speaking Spanish since she was in 5th grade when she got a private instructor to help her learn the language. When she was younger, she wanted to be a plumber after her family hired one to fix her sink. She was captured by the experience of watching her sink get taken apart and put back together again. But fortunately for us, Mrs. Smart became a teacher instead of a plumber.

She discovered her love of teaching after she had the chance to help students in her senior year of high school as a writing coach. She has 18 years of teaching experience under her belt, including a few years here at the Mill. She has taught at Oakland Mills before and is happy to be back. In between her stints at Oakland Mills, she was a literacy coach where she helped teachers infuse more reading, writing, speaking, and listening into their classroom instruction. She also headed a Shakespeare troop who performed at a Shakespeare festival, and she even helped to kick off the Jump Start program in Howard County. 

Here at OM, as the GT resource teacher, she is looking forward to getting to know her position and the students she gets to work with throughout the year. Even though things have changed since she has last been here, she believes that the community is stronger than ever and there is no place like “hOMe.”