Mrs. Laird says goodbye to Dillard Street Elementary

During Kimmie Laird's first year in the classroom at Dillard Street Elementary School in 1993, she worked as an intern in Linda Rees's class before teaching in a substitute capacity for the rest of the school year.

The next year, she began teaching in her own first-grade classroom, and she never strayed from this grade level.

When the afternoon bell rang last week for the final time in the 2016-17 school year, Laird said goodbye — not only to her students, but also to the entire staff. She is retiring after 24 years at Dillard Street, and she and her husband, Kevin, are moving to the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina.

Co-workers held a retirement party Wednesday, May 17, and former Dillard Dragon students, teachers and administrators were invited to wish her well.

Laird has been named Teacher of the Year twice during her time at Dillard, and there are some families in Winter Garden who had all of their children assigned to Laird's classroom.

Among her biggest accomplishments is the Project CHILD (Computers Helping Instruction and Learning Development) program. There were two teams of teachers, kindergarten through second grade and third through fifth, and each team had a reading, writing and math teacher. Students moved between the three teachers throughout the day.

“The students stayed with us for three years, so I got to teach them reading from learning letters through complete fluency,” Laird said. “I loved it. (Rosemary) Gates, the kindergarten writing teacher, and (Carol) Schuler, the second-grade math teacher, were the best teachers I have ever known, and they completely trained me as a teacher.”

Laird plans to volunteer at the Methodist Outreach Hinton Center and Hayesville children's library.

Contact Amy Quesinberry at [email protected].