Kristi Smalley holds her lanyard with keys to all of the libraries she in charge for the Hermiston School District.

East Oregonian

Kristi Smalley’s first impression of Hermiston is not the one that has stuck with her.

Smalley will retire this June, after 36 years serving the Hermiston School District as a teacher and librarian for the elementary schools.

But she still remembers her initial reaction to finding out about a job opening in the town she’d grow to love. It was August of 1982 and Smalley, then 21, was just out of college and applying to jobs in Colorado and Montana.

“My mom told me to apply for a job here,” Smalley said. “I said, ‘It smells like feedlots and that’s where my dentist is.’ That’s what I equated Hermiston with.”

But Smalley took the job, and two weeks later, was standing in front of a classroom full of first graders.

So began a long career working with kids, and handling the changes schools and libraries have seen in the past few decades.

As she prepares to step back, Smalley said retirement will require a mental shift.

“It was a hard decision to make,” she said. “So much of my identity is ‘I’m a teacher.’ But I don’t think you ever stop being a teacher. You just use that skill in a different way.”

Smalley plans to use it doing the things she loves — volunteering in classrooms when she can, and serving on the boards of organizations such as the ARC and Special Olympics, where her daughter Jillian is an athlete.

Smalley recalled some of the highlights and shifts throughout her career. She has stayed in contact with some of her students, recalling one girl in the first class she ever taught, who is now a teacher herself.

“She would send me postcards from exotic locales where she was teaching,” Smalley said, picking up a photo of the woman teaching in the Philippines. “One of the cool things is having someone like that who I stay in touch with.”

In the mid-1990s, after teaching everything from first through sixth grade at several different schools, Smalley said her principal told her about an opening as the librarian at Highland Hills. She had recently had a baby, and after a stint teaching part-time, she was ready to go back to a full-time position.

“I decided it was probably a good fit for me,” she said.

Despite the steep learning curve, Smalley said she enjoyed the new role, working with all grade levels and focusing on teaching kids the proper ways to use library resources.

As schools dealt with budget cuts and changes, she found herself at different schools, or splitting her time at two different schools.

In the late 2000s when the recession hit, the district laid off all but two of the district’s librarians — one for the secondary schools, and one for all five elementary schools. Smalley said her seniority in the district meant she got to keep her job.

But there were challenges — having to establish relationships at each building, and figure out the unique needs of different schools with limited time was tough, Smalley said.

“You would think five days a week and five schools sounds real good,” Smalley said. “But you have holidays, Wednesday early release. In this position, you flow where you need to go.”

She said she will sometimes find herself at all five schools in one day, and her tasks have shifted from the frequent lessons she was able to do when she was just at one school.

“They’d get instructions on book selection, the Dewey Decimal system, how to search for books,” Smalley said. “When I was at one building, I felt like the kids would exit with some skills. But now it’s impossible to give that level of instruction — now it’s instruction at the point of need.”

Smalley credited library assistants and teachers with stepping in to fill some of the instruction on how to use library services. The bulk of her time now goes to a few other things: accelerated reading testing, facilitating the Battle of the Books program, and some inventory and library management.

But she said she still tries to find as much time as possible to work one-on-one with students.

“A teacher may come to me and say they have a kid that’s really not enjoying reading,” she said. Smalley enjoys helping those students find books and subjects that interest them.

She noted the major changes in technology since she started working in libraries, from digitizing catalogs to bringing in computers with educational programs.

“We needed to make sure computers are tools, not toys,” she said.

Smalley said she’s happy to pass the baton to her successor, Megan Reeve, who currently teaches in the Hermiston School District.

“I’ve worked with her, and she’s very supportive of literacy, of reading and of Battle of the Books,” she said. “I’m very excited about her carrying on the traditions.”