Connie Skrmetta - Delisle, MS

Each year in Mississippi, four teachers (one from each congressional district) are honored as MS Rural Teachers of the Year. PREPS, or the Program for Research and Evaluation for Public Schools housed at William Carey University, hands out the awards. William Carey University, alongside Mississippi State University, form the Mississippi Chapter of the National Rural Education Association, and are RSC’s newest state to join our Regional Hub Network. As we welcome our new Mississippi Hub to our network, we will be spotlighting these Rural Teachers of the Year as illustrations of the excellent work happening across the Magnolia State.

Connie Skrmetta is the Health and Physical Education Teacher at DeLisle Elementary School in DeLisle, MS. DeLisle, a town of about 1,100, sits at the edge of Bay St. Louis along Mississippi’s gulf coast, about halfway between New Orleans and the Mississippi/Alabama border, and its beaches and bayous are a year-round backdrop for outdoor activities and charming small-town, southern life. Over the past several years, Connie has worked tirelessly to pursue grants and develop programs to help encourage her students to live a healthy lifestyle, with her efforts eventually earning her nominations for both local and the state-wide MS Rural Teacher of the Year recognition.

As a Health and Physical Education teacher, the well-being of her students is Connie’s first priority. She is concerned about their potential for health-related issues, particularly diabetes, and continues to work to blend interdisciplinary learning with building the foundations for a healthy lifestyle. Before teaching, Connie worked in Exercise Physiology, was a youth soccer coach, and brings a can-do attitude into her pursuit of projects that can encourage healthy behaviors in her students. This started around COVID-times, when she began applying for local grants to establish school gardens and grow programming around outdoor learning.

Leveraging local funding and partnerships are at the center of why Connie is a transformative educator. The first grant came through the district’s health-care provider, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, who gave significant funding to establish outdoor learning. “We did an outdoor classroom. I built raised beds. We did a mobile kitchen” recalls Connie. After their partners at Blue Cross Blue Shield saw the impacts of the grant, they encouraged her to continue applying, with a greenhouse next up to extend the outdoor learning season. “I've never done a greenhouse in my life, but let's go forward. So with their confidence and [support from] the superintendent, one thing led to another. Now we have a commercial-sized greenhouse. We're now starting hydroponics and aquaponics. And I just started microgreens.”

That snowball effect has continued to other local connections. Connie shares that “I use our local college extension for funds and teaching. I also use our local Master Gardener for assistance in growing expertise and teaching the students about horticulture. As a result of these efforts, we are able to supply food to our staff and community, and [send home] starter plants so they can start their own gardens at home.” This will soon include a partnership with the local farmer’s market, where students can sell their produce and help make the program financially self-sustaining. By developing a relationship with and pursuing grants from the local power company, Connie is able to keep supplies and materials coming in as the program branches in new directions and grows.

Despite her success in being awarded grants, the process was new to Connie. She simply saw a need, and got to work. As the success of small projects demonstrated the value of that investment, the grants got larger and the impact widened. “It seems like the more you do, I think the confidence of people [increases]. They say ‘oh look she's already done this,’ so it seems like maybe getting started was slow but then once you start proving yourself and then people get behind you more and more” notes Connie. That often means extending working hours and putting her heart into what can be tedious applications. Her mantra is simple: “just get ‘er done. Just follow the directions and get it done. That's it. That's my Mississippi motto.”

Her efforts have led to significant buy-in from the community, first and foremost among the families of her students. This is, in part, driven by the community-focused nature of Connie’s programs: “what we've been able to do is help some of our needy families with fresh organic food to send home for Christmas and Thanksgiving. And as food comes in, kids whose parents have said ‘yes I'm willing to cook it,’ so we don't waste food, we'd send that home [when] we had an abundance– and the kids were interested! They're like, ‘I want it, I want it!’” This has led to local food flowing into school as well, reinforcing the reciprocal relationship between school and community.

Reading about her deep relationships with local philanthropy, experts, and community members, one might assume that Connie was born and raised in DeLisle, having taught there for decades. She’s a relative newcomer, however, having moved to the gulf town seven years ago. Her journey here has been winding, including working in the private sector, teaching in Istanbul, and teaching in cities like Chattanooga, TN, and Austin, TX. “Some journeys are longer than others, some are shorter. Each step along the way, I felt like, definitely, I can look backwards and see how it prepared me for the next step,” Connie reflects.

Rurality has been central to her finding her groove at DeLisle. She describes that the kind of support she receives is unique to a small town, sharing that “I like the fact that a rural community is kind and appreciative of the little things you can do” as a teacher. Accepting that the journey that led her to rural school was winding has made her a better teacher: “it's okay to find your spot. It's okay to change. And I think as educators we're taught to be lifelong learners, but sometimes we think that's in one setting– and it may be, but it may not be. I had a good friend ask me just this weekend and said, ‘so how long are you doing this?’ and I said, ‘well, I hadn't planned on doing it as long as I am, but it's all going so well, I'd be crazy not to continue.’

Special thanks to Amanda Tullos at Mississippi State University for connecting us with the MS Rural Teachers of the year, Connie Skrmetta, and helping us tell her story!