By Raine Wang ’25
It’s 7:35 a.m. on a Wednesday morning – the clouds are gray, the halls of Estes are far too busy for how early it is, and Middle School math teacher Tylon Smith is already bustling about, making friendly chit-chat with students as he moves through the corridors with a sense of familiarity. If one were to walk in on the scene without knowing Mr. Smith, they might have assumed he has been at KO for far longer than a couple of weeks.
Well, they’d be correct, sort of. Mr. Smith has been here before, just not as a teacher. He came to KO when he was in eighth grade and stayed until the end of his high school career when he graduated in 2011. However, even after nearly 11 years away from the school, Mr. Smith hasn’t lost sight of KO’s importance to him. “Since I was here as a student, it’s always felt like home,” he remarked. “I always knew I wanted to come back at some capacity. I’m just honored and blessed to have the opportunity to teach here.” He describes the feeling of coming back – stepping into Roberts Theater after so long and still recognizing the smell, the feeling, and even the cold air that rushes through the room.
Mr. Smith was a basketball player at KO, and he went on to play in college at Southern Connecticut State University, where he graduated with a sports management degree. He then went on to teach for two years at Manchester Community College, and he has a background as a behavioral specialist. Since coming back to KO, Mr. Smith has begun teaching math in the Middle School and serving as an assistant coach to both the Middle School A soccer and Middle School B basketball teams.
Mr. Smith believes that his experiences working with kids prior to returning to KO have impacted the way he approaches teaching. He believes that before he can teach his students, there first needs to be a relationship between them. “All grades of teaching start with a relationship,” he said. “If I can’t establish a relationship first, then the students aren’t gonna buy into what I’m trying to teach them. I think that was more so shown in my year of remote teaching, because you’re not in person, so it’s even harder to build that relationship because you’re behind the screen the entire day.”
It’s obvious that Mr. Smith cares about his students and about KO – in our interview, he spoke passionately about this school, even after having been away from it for so long. Mr. Smith brings energy and compassion to the Middle School, and we are so glad to have him back, once again roaming KO’s halls.
