Heather Wright/The Independent

When Linda Smith was a teacher at Lambton Centennial and Wyoming Public School, she gave the best she could to students with learning challenges.

Now that she’s retired, she’s giving them her best again.

The retired Petrolia teacher has set up a student scholarship program for young women at LCCVI. 

“I wanted to make sure that girls, in particular –  because we’re still disadvantaging our female population in education –  I wanted to make sure that there could be an opportunity for any … young woman trying to get somewhere that they would not be held back by that financial discrepancy,” she tells The Independent.

Smith remembers what that felt like. “I remember the (financial) officer at the university saying, ‘you know, your dad’s a farmer, he can sell a combine or something,” when she scrambling to find the cash to become a teacher. 

But she also wants to help students with learning challenges, who work hard, but “weren’t the top of the pile and you weren’t the bottom of the pile, you were just there that nice 70 to 80 per cent kid that did their best, tried their best,” Smith said.

“They’ve worked twice as hard as the next kid just to graduate. So if you can also lift them up at the same time, that’s the goal.”

And Smith says, the former principal at LCCVI said there are students who need that financial help to go to college.

“So if you can take away one stressor, which would be a financial stressor, if you can take that away to help them focus on and concentrate on what they are doing, to adapt and try to make their way through the world, that’s kind of what I was thinking of as a retired teacher.”

Smith’s scholarship – a $5,000 bursary given to a female LCCVI student with learning challenges – is called the All-Around Student Bursary. It focuses on more than just high marks. 

“I wanted to reward those kids that were involved in the school or community and that were more well rounded in all their approaches,” Smith says.

“There are lots of scholarships through the plants and through different places, but a lot of them are pegged on the really high marks, the really well-deserving students. However, we don’t necessarily support that next level of student as well.”

Over her teaching career and as she volunteered at LCCVI, Smith would hear students say they’re “not worthy” of being a Nicol Scholar – the prestigious scholarship handed out each year to the top academic students in the school.

“I don’t like that expression that ‘I’m not good enough to be a Nicol person,’ but you can aspire to something regardless…I hope I have inspired somebody to think about, ‘oh, I’m worthy.’”

Smith had planned for the scholarship to begin after she had died but when she was reworking her will, she realized she could be awarding the prize now. “Why do we leave things in our will to happen after we’re gone? Why don’t we do things while we can and then get the joy and benefit of that?”

The first scholarship was awarded to Tatiana Brophy. She’s attending Lambton College’s Fire Service program.