Barrow County Early Learning Center Teacher of the Year Mitzi Smit has taught in Barrow County for 14 years, working in Bethlehem and Yargo Elementary Schools before moving to the ELC.

Before working in Barrow, Smit earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia, and later earned her master’s from Piedmont College while working full-time.

This year, Smit plans to return to Piedmont for her specialist degree.

Smit is the daughter of two educators, and credits her parents for her desire to teach and to continue her own education. In her applications for TOTY, Smit described the satisfaction she receives as a teacher.

"Teaching is a very rewarding profession because it gives an immediate sense of self-worth and imparts the immediate satisfaction of having helped students achieve their learning goals," she said. "I strongly believe all children can learn and they learn best in a positive, loving, safe environment. Children need guidance, properly modeled behavior, praise, structure, and routine. Treating all my students equally and giving them the opportunities to reach their potential and express their different learning styles is very important to me."

Through her 14 years in Barrow County, Smit has had the opportunity to keep in touch with former students.

"One of my students that I taught in kindergarten is getting ready to graduate from high school," she wrote. "Just recently I saw her performing in a Christmas play at our school. After the play, she and I talked about her future plans. She told me she wanted to be a teacher like me because she was always inspired by me. Hearing those words touched my heart deeply."

Others have noticed Smit’s influence on her students as well. Tonya Royal, the principal of ELC and Smit’s co-worker in Bethlehem and Yargo, added her praise in a letter submitted with Smit’s TOTY application.

"Mitzi loves her students as if they were her own," Royal wrote. "She strives every day to create an engaging and exciting classroom environment for them to learn...Her openness and willingness to learn new things has helped her grow and develop into a wonderful teacher."

In another letter, the mother of one of Smit’s former students told of her experience with Smit.

"One of the sweetest moments for me during [my son’s] Pre-K year was one morning when he was sick," Connie Ellington wrote. "He couldn’t go to school, and we had to stay home. [He] began crying because he wanted to go to school. I remember laughing at myself as I tried to convince him how much fun it would be to stay home from school that day. How many parents have that problem?"

In addition to teaching, Smit is the mother of two boys and a Sunday school teacher at Bogart First Baptist Church.