When a student walks through the hallways of Goodhue, some hear music coming  from Dr. Smith’s classroom and that’s not a surprise. Between his infamous “noise game”, his impactful presence at coffeehouse, and his friday morning detentions, Dr. Smith has played an essential role in the Hackley community.

As many students already know, Dr. Smith has recently decided to move to Houston, Texas with his wife who is looking to follow her teaching career. “My wife is changing jobs, so she got a job in Houston. It’s a kind of exciting, different job. She’ll be the founding head of a new upper school there. She got a rare opportunity and she started to get excited about it and so did I. So we went down, not knowing much about Texas, and we actually really enjoyed it,” said Dr. Smith.

Considering Dr. Smith has been such a huge part of the Hackley community for 12 years, not only is there a lot that will be missed about him, but certainly a lot that he will be missing. Dr. Smith said, “I’m going to miss the students first because I enjoy teaching young people and Hackley’s students are wonderful. In a larger sense I’ll miss the community as a whole and its different components. Hackley is more of a concentrated community with more opportunities to get to know each other and that is one thing that I will miss for sure.”  

Dr. Smith has had many memorable times at Hackley, but some of his favorite memories include: his very own noise offs during 70 minute history, students’ Coffeehouse performances, and graduation. The noise off is a game that was created by Dr. Smith made for students to relax at the beginning of 70 minute history and allow them to let loose. Dr. Smith makes a noise and the whole class, one by one, has to imitate that noise as best they can.

Dr Smith said, “I love graduation because every year you get to see the new group be launched out. If you teach for a long time you have seen a lot of graduations, but there’s still that feeling of excitement for the kids. Along with graduation, because I’m a musician, I’ve always enjoyed seeing Hackley kids perform in one way or another whether it’s theatre, music, or coffee house.”

Ever since Dr. Smith has been at Hackley, Coffeehouse has evolved into a big event. Dr. Smith loves coffeehouse because he feels that teachers have learned to “give as much of the control of coffeehouse as we can to students in a way that the students feel that they have ownership.”

While Dr. Smith’s time at Hackley has been important to the whole community, his future in Texas holds a multitude of opportunities. Dr. Smith is looking to continue his teaching career, but he is also trying to maintain and balance his music.

“I’m going to do a variety of things there, at the moment I’m not sure, but I do know that it’s highly unlikely that I’ll just sit around next to the pool, so I probably will do some teaching, but I’ll also be doing more music. I’ll want to do some more playing, writing, and some more recording. I’d love to see if I could balance that all out a little bit more,” said Dr. Smith.