As a child, John Smith had some difficult, nasty teachers. To prove to himself there were other ways for kids to learn, he became a teacher himself and never looked back.

"I thought I'd teach five years to prove it to myself, but I just fell in love with the kids and teaching and I've been here ever since," he said.

Smith, who works with first- and second-year teachers as the Right Start instructor at Old Mill Middle School - South, is retiring after 40 years of teaching, almost all of which has been in Anne Arundel County. He believes his work reached beyond the classroom.

"Every day I could come...