Constantly running here, there, and everywhere is all in a days work for Stacey Smith.

She has been the Activities Director at the high school for many years and has found that every day is a new adventure. Smith grew up in Hamshire, TX on a crawfish, cattle, rice, and soybean farm. She attended Hamshire-Fannett High School and then went on to earn a communications degree from St. Edward’s University and a teaching degree from Texas Tech University.

While Smith was in college, she worked for three years with the Texas House of Representatives in constituent relations for the representative for Southeast Texas at that time, Mark Stiles. One of her fondest memories of that job was when she got to fly on the governor’s plane to accompany Ann Richards and her team to the opening of the prison unit in Beaumont. Before entering the teaching field, she worked in Human Resources for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“I like to see the expressions on people’s faces when I tell them my first ‘real’ job was on a 500-bed maximum security psychiatric prison for men that had a 550-bed trustee camp behind my unit and I had to be buzzed through three different crash gates to get to my office,” Smith said. “The unit had plenty of civilian workers, but the day to day running of things around the unit were handled by the trustees. We had trustee office porters, which was one of the higher status jobs for a trustee.”

Even though Smith’s parents were teachers, she never had the desire to enter the teaching field herself. That all changed when she was hired at LCM in August of 1996 as a Speech teacher. Speech teachers were needed at this time because the State of Texas decided speech or Communication Applications would be a graduation requirement.

“At this point it is hard to imagine doing anything else,” Smith said. “I have no regrets and the memories I have and the network of educator friends I have made is priceless. There is no better career for a working mom, in my opinion.”

Smith has many fond and rather interesting memories from working at LCM. One of her favorite memories is from a few years back when she and Michael Ridout decorated the entire prom on their own. It was a Jungle and Arabian Nights themed prom, complete with live elephants and camels as a greeting committee.

After working at LCM for many years, Smith has discovered she finds joy in seeing the accomplishments of students.

“I am so proud when I see individuals or teams set goals and succeed,” Smith said. “I enjoy seeing a new student become part of a happy group of friends as much as seeing a team compete at the state level.”

“Many of my favorite memories involve adults and scenes you could put together in a what not to do video when things just don’t go as planned in what you originally thought was a well-thought out activity or lesson initially,” Smith said.

Smith believes LCM is just the right size school for her. It is big enough to be able to offer a great variety of classes and activities for students, and it has enough people to be able to keep things competitive and students always striving to achieve more. She said she works with a great team of people and has developed relationships that will last a lifetime.

“I value the family type attitude that many of our groups and teams have adopted,” Smith said. “You don’t see that just everywhere.”

Smith’s job as Activities Director is to make the activities that do not fall under the categories of instruction or discipline run smoothly throughout the school day. She said she typically comes to work with a plan for the day, but is usually diverted to something of higher importance.

“There are many days that I never get to the No. 1 thing to do on my list,” Smith said. “Any job in education is a selfless job and you have to put needs of others ahead of your own. In all things, students must come first.”