Hoyne Elementary Teacher Continues Legacy

We’re celebrating Teachers Appreciation Week the week of May 7-11!

Nicole Smith-Franklin says becoming an educator was hardly a choice. It was a “birthright;” one that she says she felt called to do.

Teaching has been in her family for three generations. Both her mother and grandmother were educators, and now she’s in her eighth year.

When the time came to choose a career path, Smith-Franklin says that she always knew she’d become a teacher. She wanted to follow in her family’s footsteps, she adds.

Today, Smith-Franklin is doing more than just fulfilling her family’s legacy. She’s not only a social studies teacher at Hoyne Elementary, but she’s also a cheerleading coach and the creator and host of “Girl Talk,” a conference that facilitates healthy conversations fostered for women, by women.

“It’s like my life has been wrapped around helping these children, but being able to visually see that I matter in this world makes me feel like I am living the dream.”

By the time Smith-Franklin attended Beasley Academic Center, she says she knew she was destined to become a teacher. A summer working alongside her mother made the dream reality.

“Chicago Public Schools had a program for summer jobs, and I worked with my mom as a tutor in the eighth grade,” says Smith-Franklin. “It was just so awesome helping the kids learn how to read and do work. It was such a great feeling. I just knew that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

Smith-Franklin was raised on the South Side of Chicago and attended Chicago Public Schools—first Gillespie Elementary, then Beasley Academic Center, and finally Morgan Park High School—before making her way to the front of the classroom at Hoyne Elementary.

It was her second grade teacher at Gillespie Elementary, Ms. Turner, who Smith-Franklin says encouraged both a strong work ethic and responsibility, all values she has carried through her academic and professional career.

Ms. Turner also gave Smith-Franklin her first job in the classroom—board washer.

“There were some days where I would show up late because I wanted to play outside, and she’d say, ‘Oh no, I gave the job to someone else because you didn’t come.’”

“Being able to understand [responsibility] at an early age was very beneficial,” says Smith-Franklin. “She really helped me understand the value of being responsible and maintaining your own business, no matter what the business was.”

Ms. Turner wasn’t the only teacher to have an impact on Smith-Franklin. There was also Ms. Hudson, a third grade teacher with a small stature, powerful personality, and everything, Smith-Franklin says she wanted to be.

“Ms. Hudson was my favorite teacher,” she says. “She had a very low speaking voice, but she still commanded the classroom in a very dynamic way. I wanted to be just like her.”

From the halls of Morgan Park High School to the campus at Illinois State University, Smith-Franklin worked to make her way back into the classroom, this time in front of it.

Now, as a teacher, Smith-Franklin says she’s working to instill in her students some of the adopted values passed down from impactful leaders like Ms. Hudson and Ms. Turner.

“My method as a teacher is to bring real world experiences to the students and make sure that they become productive people who will bring good into the world,” she says.

Watching students become passionate about global issues is one of the most rewarding parts of the job, says Smith-Franklin.

“Instead of them just being passive and letting things happen to them, they’re taking more of an active role,” she explains. “Being able to see them become knowledgeable and passionate about what’s going on in the world makes me feel like what I’m doing matters.”

Smith-Franklin says her impact in the classroom was reconfirmed one day after a student had an emotional breakdown and some of the other students came to her for assistance.

“We started talking about some of the things that she was going through, and she was contemplating suicide,” says Smith-Franklin. “The fact that they felt comfortable enough to bring her to me for the help that she needed…I felt like this is something that I am called to do.”

Despite challenges, she says that she is dedicated to making sure her students feel her presence as both an educator and supporter.

“Someone everyday in that class needs me,” says Smith-Franklin. “Being that for someone else makes me get out of bed and help.”

She says she has no plans of leaving the teaching game anytime soon and hopes that as her students move on, they remember the lessons taught in her classroom.

“I hope they learn that things happen, but it’s up to you to decide how you’re going to move forward and who you’re going to be.”

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