The Alma Jean Smith Washington Educator of the Year Award has been established to recognize educators in our community who have spent their careers investing their gifts of teaching and compassion in the lives of students. Mrs. Washington is the mother of Oscar D. Washington, Jr., and this inaugural award begins by honoring her lifetime of education in Arkansas.
Alma Jean Smith Washington was born on August 3rd, 1943 in McRae Arkansas. She graduated from the White County Training school in Searcy, Arkansas, and then attended the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, graduating in 1967 with honors in the field of Education. She began her first teaching job in Brinkley, Arkansas. She taught fourth grade for three years, self-contained which included teaching all subjects. Her first class had forty-one students. She applied for a job in Carlisle in 1979 where she taught for 27 years and retired in 1998. Education was Alma Jean Washington’s passion. She knew she wanted to be a teacher in 3rd grade. Mrs. Washington states that she was always reading at home and sometimes got in trouble for not doing her work.
Her thirty years of teaching were one of her greatest achievements in life. Mrs. Washington enjoyed her students and tried to instill in them that education was the key to success. She was also very blessed to teach her own children during her teaching career in Carlisle, Arkansas. “Oscar Jr. was my oldest son and he grew up with that same desire to learn. He knew education would be his key to success,” says Mrs. Washington.