THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412140142
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Teachers joke that their youngest students can't imagine they have a private life. They say kids believe teachers pop fully dressed out of classroom closets every morning, like stacks of reading books or pieces of construction paper.
At Pembroke Meadows Elementary School, some youngsters are getting a reality check.
Lisa Kay Smith's first-graders are amazed and fascinated to discover that the woman in the classroom next door is their teacher's mother. And that they live together.
``They ask me why I don't call her mom,'' said Lisa Smith, laughing. ``One of them even asked me if I call her Mrs. Smith at home.''
Room 3 belongs to Lisa Smith. Room 4, a second-grade class, is Gloria Smith's. They teach side-by-side and live in Kings Grant. Lisa Smith, 23, is in her second year at Pembroke. Her mom has taught there 10 years.
They say all this togetherness has worked out fine even though they'd never planned it.
After Lisa Smith graduated from Princess Anne High School and Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., in 1993, she applied to school districts in the Tar Heel State and in Virginia Beach. When she got a call to interview at Pembroke Meadows, she was surprised and pleased. The job, teaching first grade, was exactly what she'd hoped for.
``I wasn't worried about my mom working there. I think she was,'' recalled Lisa Smith. Her father, Cmdr. Paul Smith, is stationed at the Pentagon. Her brother is a sophomore at the University of Virginia. By staying home, she figured she'd keep her mother company. But her mom had concerns.
``I thought it would be more of a problem for her,'' Gloria Smith said. ``You like to establish a reputation when you start out as a teacher and I had been in the building so long that I worried about her establishing her own identity.''
What could also have been nerve-racking for Lisa Smith, is that her mother would eventually get some of her students since the women teach consecutive grade levels.
``This year I had some of her children for the first time and I'm very proud and very impressed with her and the job she's done,'' said Gloria Smith.
Principal Bill Jenkins agreed that any fears the two had were groundless. ``They respect each other's territory; it's worked out real well,'' he said.
Lisa Smith has occasionally taken advantage of her mother's experience in the classroom and asked for advice when she's been stumped. And even though the Smiths share teaching ideas and slip into each other's classrooms during the day to borrow things, they draw the line at too much togetherness.
After school, Lisa Smith heads out to lift weights, Gloria Smith for aerobics classes - in separate places. ``She lives with me and she teaches with me and I decided I'd go to a different rec center than she does,'' said Gloria Smith.
It's the kind of sensitivity only a mother could have, or a very good friend, according to Lisa Smith.
``I don't think a typical 23-year-old would like to teach with their mother, but my mother and I have never had a typical relationship,'' she said.
``I feel like I stand on my own even with her. My mom is my friend.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MORT FRYMAN
First grade teacher Lisa Smith, front, and her mother, second grade
teacher Gloria Smith, monitor the hallway as students arrive for
class.
by CNB