Ms. Smith and Kelsie Sanborn share a birthday.

Carolyn Ann Smith

Literature, Journalism/Yearbook, Testing Coordinator

A serendipitous event occurred that changed the course of my life and plopped me down in a completely new and wonderful environment — Foothills Academy.

I hail from New Ulm, Minnesota, a small burg nestled between the Minnesota and Cottonwood Rivers. I completed an undergraduate degree in Minnesota in English, speech, and theater arts. I received a master’s degree in special education and learning disabilities from Ball State University, and hold postgraduate degrees in journalism and humanities from the University of Iowa.

I spent twenty-three years teaching in Wiesbaden, Germany, at WAMS and General H. H. Arnold High School, and three and one half years on the island of Okinawa in Japan at Kadena Middle School. I produced yearbooks and school newspapers in Europe and Asia and am pleased to be doing both here at Foothills, as journalism is my first love. I announced track and wrestling for twenty-one years in Wiesbaden, was the four-year coordinator of the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DoDDS) European Journalism Conference held in Nuremberg each year, served as English Department chairperson for eleven years, participated on the DoDDS text book selection and curriculum committees, wrote for the North Central Accreditation team, and edited the art and literary anthology titled Sketches in Europe and Lines in Asia.

As far as hobbies, I love to travel and have been all over the world; I am saving Antarctica for my old age. Real enthusiasm for the game overcomes any of my many golf deficiencies. I became an advanced open water diver on Okinawa, where we had the most incredible blue coral reef. I spend summers in Minnesota giving tours at a 143-year-old brewery named Schells, biking the Sakata and Red Jacket Trails, and enjoying my family.

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

— J.D. Salinger