Lauren Halcomb-Smith wins Kelly “New Teacher” Award for her work with education professionals

Royal Roads University’s Kelly Outstanding Teaching Awards honour teachers for promoting the school’s learner-centred philosophy and making positive contributions to teaching excellence.

But if you ask Lauren Halcomb-Smith, who was recently named winner of the 2023 Kelly New Teacher Award, it’s the students who make the classroom experience exceptional.

“It’s only because of their energy and their commitment that these incredibly rich experiences happen,” says the School of Education and Technology associate faculty member. 

Halcomb-Smith teaches two courses to mid-career education leaders at Royal Roads, Leading for Social Justice and Leading Technology Integration in Schools, and previously worked at the university supporting faculty in developing teaching skills and designing courses.

(The New Teacher Award goes to candidates who have taught fewer than five courses at Royal Roads.)

And she says her aim in her classes are focused on the outcomes: “I want to help them achieve the goals of the course, the goals of the program… but I want to do that in ways that are engaging, that are student-centred, that are participatory, that are empowering. Overall, what I want to do is facilitate their learning by whatever means are most suitable for them or the content… I really see myself as a facilitator.”

She draws heavily on her background as an English-as-a-second-language teacher who has taught in Ghana, Canada and Australia, saying, “When you’re trying to teach someone how to speak a language, the most effective strategy is to create learning experiences that are really student-centred, that are participatory, where they have to communicate in order to fulfill whatever the activity is.”

For instance, in her social justice class, she assigned students the task of co-creating and facilitating a mini professional development workshop for one another; students then shared formative and appreciative feedback with each other about the workshops, which served as a building block for the final assignment in the course.

Still, for all her experience and education — she has taught for two decades and earned a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics as well as a PhD in Educational Studies — she gives credit for her classes’ success to the students and their willingness to both change and be agents of change at their schools.

“I want them to feel like they’ve been part of a community and contributed to a community,” says Halcomb-Smith, who’s currently based in Melbourne, Australia, where she’s the manager, scholarly communications and research outputs, at Deakin University. “And I want them to feel like they’ve been transformed and they have the capacity to transform their communities beyond the program. I want them to have life-changing learning experiences because, as associate faculty for Royal Roads, that’s what I’ve been charged to do.”

Again, she credits the students and the varied histories they bring because “I think it offers people a chance to cultivate their compassion for the diversity of human experience.

“Having students who come from diverse backgrounds,” Halcomb-Smith says, “they get to see what it means to value and appreciate the breadth of human experience as a learner, and then they can bring that back to their own schools and their own classrooms.”

The Kelly Outstanding Teaching Awards are open to all Royal Roads University faculty members who are actively engaged in teaching for-credit or non-credit courses at RRU. A call for nominations is sent out each spring to faculty, staff, and students. Learn more about the awards and see past recipients.

Learn more about programs in the School of Education and Technology or request more information.