Her Story
Dyane Smokorowski, known as “Smoke” to everyone who knows her, says she knew she would be a teacher at age four, lying on her cot at nap time and listening to her teachers plan the next day’s lessons. She decided that lesson planning could be a teacher’s artistic medium. At 17, she watched the Disney American Teacher Awards on television and resolved to become a teacher who dreamed big. She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Wichita State University and a master’s in education technology from MidAmerica Nazarene University.
Her philosophy rests on five beliefs: a teacher’s role is to love first and teach second; students’ curiosities and passions are the cornerstones of curriculum; learners are the makers of meaning, knowledge and criteria of excellence; the physical classroom should respond to students’ needs; and teachers never stop learning alongside their students. In her fourth year of teaching, her district recruited her for a national technology teacher training pilot with Intel and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which launched her work as a teacher leader.
In her eighth grade classroom at Andover Middle School, her principal says she used project-based learning to find real-world relevance in every state standard, and on any given day students might be organizing a fundraiser, building a web page or Skyping with professionals. In a ten-week project built around Treasure Island, her students investigated digital piracy, interviewed experts and published a website for other teens that was being used in Australia within 24 hours. In another project, called Exchanging Hope, her students read an Underground Railroad story, learned that children at an orphanage in Nigeria had no school materials, and collected textbooks, manipulatives and books for them while the children made artwork for the students’ library. The school opened six months later with enough materials for two years.
Beyond the Classroom
Smokorowski was the 2013 Kansas Teacher of the Year and the 2013 Andover Teacher of the Year. She is a Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes Fellow (2014), was named one of the NSBA’s Top 20 to Watch in Education for the Next 20 Years and received an Intel Inspiring Educator Award in 2009 and the Dollywood Foundation’s Dolly Parton Chasing Rainbows Award in 2015. She is on the boards of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year and its Kansas chapter, serves on the Kansas education commissioner’s Teacher Advisory Council, and teaches education technology as an adjunct at MidAmerica Nazarene University.
Over six years she helped make her district the most globally connected in the nation. She co-designed global collaborative projects for more than 45,000 students, co-organized 15 statewide professional learning events and helped establish the Skype Master Teacher Cohort with Microsoft. She co-hosts a podcast, “Education for a Better World,” and designs teacher professional learning trips, including a field trip to Walt Disney World for more than 40 teachers. Her principal describes her leading the Andover Instructional Framework Academy, in which teachers receive a classroom set of devices and a year of training on changing how they teach with them, and she organizes EdCamp days for area teachers.
Philosophy Into Practice
Smokorowski’s students show their learning through writing, discussion, debate and reflection rather than recall quizzes. She says success is measured by whether students take risks and shift from followers to leaders, and when a shy student speaks in public with confidence, that is a success.
She names two issues in education: poor professional development, which she says too often is irrelevant and one-size-fits-all, and scripted curriculum that removes teacher creativity. In response she designed a teacher leader academy in her district, where a cohort of teachers each year takes teacher field trips to local businesses and museums, joins virtual roundtables with teachers around the world and designs personal action research projects. She also mentors early-career teachers and challenges them to design their own curriculum.
“My learning environment is one where ideas are encouraged, voices valued, struggles welcomed, relationships embraced, and belly laughs are treasured.”Dyane Smokorowski
In Her Own Words
“A teacher’s role is to love first and teach second.”Dyane Smokorowski
“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.”Dyane Smokorowski, quoting John Dewey
“Not only teach out of the box, they destroy the box.”Dyane Smokorowski
What Others Said
“Dyane Smokorowski is everything a Hall of Fame teacher should be.”Megan Felt, nominator, colleague
“Dyane Smokorowski has truly made a world of difference for our teachers and students.”Debra Regier, principal, Andover Middle School
“Her teaching and coaching are world class, and her ability to connect with teachers and support them is second to none.”Eric Crouch, colleague, 2017 Milken Educator, Georgia
“She helped me realize that I have a powerful voice that can be used to promote positive change.”Melissa Lawrence, former student
“Dyane’s expertise and knowledge of student-centered learning and technology is above and beyond the norm.”Heather Hawkins, colleague and media specialist