Tamara Smart

the state of Arkansas. That had never happened before. If I ever go back to get my degree, that’s what I would get it in is admin because I was familiar with it.”

Several of the nominations for Smart mention how she is very supportive of both HHE students, the teachers and staff.

“That was my main goal, I think, going into administration, because truly, I love teaching. I miss the classroom so much more than I anticipated. Going to the next level, being an administrator, my whole goal was to be able to still be an advocate for my teachers and be that supportive person they could count on and trust, because so much comes up.

“Teachers are under so much pressure nowadays. There’s a lot with disciplining kiddos here and at home.

“Teachers are so much more than just teachers nowadays. They’re parents and counselors and all of those things. When you’ve lived it like I did, I never wanted to forget that. I took that next step. That was always very important to me not to lose that and for them to kind of keep me grounded. That was always one thing that Mrs. Sherrer did and I wanted to emulate that after she left.

“I do always want to support my teachers as much as I can and remember what it was like in the trenches.” works, and turn assignments in.

“We know that there was learning loss. It was inevitable. When kids didn’t come back immediately after three or four months, it just widened. Luckily, I feel we are getting back on track… but you do see the repercussions of it.”

Smart believes many parents learned to be grateful for teachers after trying to teach their children at home. “…our jobs are very important and a computer can’t do what a real-life teacher can do.”

She’s proud of the extra efforts the teachers are making to make learning fun and getting them engaged. HHE has been improving their efficiency in overall test scores for math and reading.

She and her teachers do the research, she said. “What are the interventions? What are the things that are going to make an impact on those reading scores and those math scores. Our teachers are going through a training with our co-op called Math Quest. It’s cognitive guided instruction. It’s an extra supplement to the Eureka Math they are already doing that helps kids learn math in their own unique way.” fifth and sixth grade, being on different campuses, are getting to do something together. That’s neat, too, to bridge that gap between here and middle school.”

They have also tried to gain interest in reading with their book clubs. Not only are they reading a book or having a story read to them, but they have special guests, such as a cartographer when they were reading a story on maps.

Smart likes to give words of wisdom or positive affirmations each morning over the intercom to encourage the children.

“Every day is about a different topic. Today was about your conscience, and really just stop and thinking before you say and do things, and letting your conscience guide you. The other day, it was a quote from Socrates. Huck Finn was the quote this morning that had to do with your conscience. Sometimes he said something to the effect that guilt can eat you up from the inside when you don’t listen to your conscience.

“Just talking to our kiddos like that, we want to affirm every single morning how loved they are. That’s always an affirmation. One of the things we’ve done this year is they have their mission statement, which we recite together over the intercom. Our whole motto is, ‘We rise by lifting others.’ They know that RISE stands for respect, integrity, being safe and putting forth effort. When they get in trouble, they know what part of RISE are you not doing?”

Smart said there are a lot of positive incentives that go with RISE.

Tamara Smart has the responsibility of handling a building full of adult employees, as well as a few hundred kids ranging from third through fifth grade at Holly Harshman Elementary School (HHE).

Smart replaced Paulette Sherrer, who Smart describes as a dear friend.

“Paulette and I actually went back and got our master’s for ed [educational] leadership together. I was pregnant with my daughter, so Paulette finished up hers before me, then kind of helped me through after I had Lainey. Then she became principal here. I was actually blessed to get to follow behind her.”

Smart became principal of HHE beginning the 2015-2016 school year. She graduated from Henderson in 2000 with her bachelor’s in elementary education and she has her early childhood certification. In 2012, she graduated from Harding with her master’s in ed leadership.

Smart began her teaching career at HHE in 2006 as a fourth-grade teacher. She taught fourth grade for four years, then moved to third grade and taught it for five years.

Smart then went to Waldron and taught first grade, commuting from Mena for six years. Granted, that was nothing compared to her commutes while pregnant, to Nashville, Arkansas. After her middle child was born, she then had to travel to Little Rock three or four times a week during the summer to finish her degree. She also took an online class at SAU at the time.

Becoming a principal was not within her scope when she began a career in education, but it is a family tradition.

“My dad was a principal and a superintendent. Both of my uncles on his side… were principals, superintendents and administrators. At one time, they were all three superintendents in

As for the students, Smart looks back when she had 25 in a classroom to now having over 400. Although there are a few times a teacher is gone and there aren’t enough substitute teachers, Smart will step into the classroom once again.

“I do feel like they’re mine. When they’re here, if they’re getting disciplined or if it’s positive, I say, ‘I’m your parent.’ That’s me eight hours a day, like it or not. I do love them. I want to see them succeed. We really try to instill those values. We are so much more than a school to our kiddos here. That’s first and foremost before test scores or anything else. My mantra to my teachers is, ‘love them.’ Everything else comes after that. If they know they’re loved and supported, they’re going to learn from you in some way, shape or form.”

Smart gives credit to her amazing staff for helping get things on track once the spring 2020 school year was over and the pandemic had shut everything down. She worked with staff to make the return to the classroom as easy as possible for students and teachers.

“When they initially came back, they had three different choices: They could be on campus in-person, they could do virtual through Polk County Virtual, or they could do blended, which was the teachers would video as much as they could in person, but the teachers were still responsible for their learning, but they stayed at home with the concept of when parents felt comfortable then they would come back. Blended was so difficult on my teachers, because are you not only are you responsible for those kids who are here every day, but you were trying to touch base and trying to make contact. Some parents were amazing with it. Some, it was more difficult. The online learning is difficult, and getting familiar with the Chromebook and how it

HHE students also worked with sixth graders in the middle school and recently attended the Quiz Bowl championship in Murfreesboro, taking first place.

“We’re definitely proud of them. I like that our

It not only gives the children something to achieve, but perhaps a lesson that putting forth effort and implementing the four actions that RISE stands for pays off.

As for being recognized as a Woman in Business, Smart said, “It’s humbling. I was totally surprised, grateful and appreciative.”

Deedee Alston is a farmer, a realtor, co-owner of Alston Land Services, a certified Dave Ramsey Coach,and owns The Vault Coffee Shop. She has her bachelor’s from John Brown University and her MBA from UALR. She was once the Chief Operations Officer for Healthy Connections.

She and her husband Luke owned and operated Holly Springs Homestead for seven years. They sold produce and canned goods, including items from their berry farm. They were chosen as the 2017 Arkansas Farm Family of the Year.

Alston said, “We had an Angus ranch, eight [Tyson contract] broiler houses, and we had a heritage breed free-range pig farm. We did our own meats. We had Angus beef as well as heritage breed free-range pork in our on-farm market.”

When COVID-19 prevented kids from coming back out to the farm, it was part of what forced the Alstons to make a decision to close the farm.

“Diversifying on a farm is the key to success. When the cattle market is down, or the poultry market is down, or you have crop failure, you have these other lines of income. It’s really where agritourism came into being. Arkansas’ number one industry is agriculture. I was one of the early founding members of the Arkansas Agritourism Association and sat on that board. For me, it was great because I was able to marry those two things together. Our whole operation was born out of that.

“When COVID happened… we still had a full berry crop to do something with. We quickly converted to an online market. We did farm-side pickup. We would have tables set out and people would literally drive by and pick that up.”

Pre-COVID, children went to the farm on field trips. Parents also took their kids out to the farm during the summer for Homestead Camp.

“We ran that for a couple of years. That was one of my greatest joys because we were trying to teach kids skills.”

Beyond growing food and eating what they picked from farm-to-table, they also got to cap off their week with a camping trip. The kids would go home and talk about the camp. Parents began requesting similar adult classes, which they enjoyed just as much as the children.

“We didn’t really close down [Holly Springs Homestead], we just kind of waited. When you’re planning for the October corn maze, you’re making decisions in April, May and June. It’s a big investment to put in the corn maze.

“Then we had a flood. COVID was not the final chapter for us. It was the single time the Ouachita and the Irons Fork River met. That level of flood wiped out all of the infrastructure on the farm.”

“It’s also hard to recreate a labor force prior to COVID that was happy with $10 - $12 per hour working in the sun with no benefits.”

The harsh freeze and snow in early 2021, and the early freeze of October 2021 were devastating.

The Alstons were also heavily involved with the local 4-H group, their own kids being in 4-H at different levels while participating in sports.

“The 4-H groups were a lot of our homestead kids, but there was another level who had never touched the farm before. They wanted their hands in the dirt and wanted to understand that.

As her children got older, she also became involved with the Home Economist Club, which