Caleb Smith stood illuminated under the stage lights in the Jones College auditorium in Ellisville, Mississippi, on Jan. 28, 2026. Armed with his slides, an enthusiasm for the topic and a captive audience, Smith spoke to the crowd, delivering his lecture on the influences of popular culture.
Smith paused occasionally to ask audience members if they recognized the examples in his slides. Many pointed out the more well known examples from classic media in his slides like “Forrest Gump” and “The Wizard of Oz.” But it was one of his lesser known examples that created an unforgettable moment for Smith.
The projector displayed a mural painted on the side of a building in a town in Northern Ireland depicting five teens in their school uniforms. The boy on the end smiles. Beside him, a girl smirks while holding up three fingers, while two girls on the other side both have a look of shock on their faces. In the center is a blonde girl with one eyebrow raised and an unimpressed look on her face.
These five are James Maguire, Michelle Mallon, Clare Devlin, Orla McCool and Erin Quinn: the main characters of the TV show “Derry Girls,” a ’90s sitcom set in Derry, Northern Ireland, that focuses on the lives of a friend group as the students navigate scholastic responsibilities, friendships and relationship problems. Their stories are set against the backdrop of political conflict during the final years of the 1990s “The Troubles,” a period of riots, mass protests and civil disobedience in Northern Ireland.
Smith looked into the audience as he asked if anyone recognized the picture that was displayed on the slide. Through the mumbled “no”s of the crowd, he heard someone shout “Derry Girls.” The professor turned to see that it came from one of his coworkers. Smith was thrilled, not just because someone in the audience had known the show, but because in that moment a connection was formed, punctuating the point he was making through his lecture.
“It made me feel good because you make that connection with someone whenever you realize you both know the same cultural thing, and that’s kind of like a fun thing about college … that you meet other people,” Smith said. “You find these things that they like and these commonalities for what creates bonds with people.”
‘Inspiration Behind the Presentation’
The Mississippi Humanities Council recognized Smith, a professor who teaches world regional geography and American history at Jones College, by awarding him the 2025-2026 Humanities Teacher of the Year Award. The 2026 Public Humanities Awards ceremony was held on March 20 at the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson. Smith was unable to attend due to a schedule conflict, but the council contacted him to inform him of his win.
Receiving the award, Smith said, was an amazing and unexpected honor that places him among a distinguished group consisting of previous award recipients.
“Professionally, it’s a really big moment,” Smith said. “It’s one of the biggest teaching awards I’ve ever gotten to be selected by the Mississippi Humanities Council.”
The presentation, titled “How the School of Popular Culture Unites, Divides and Shapes Our Perception,” focused on how popular culture can shape people’s beliefs and perceptions of the world. In the lecture, Smith explained how—beside the influences of family—media and popular culture can be one of the first forms of education for many. These first learned experiences can lead to situational biases, in which people will believe that the information learned from this first source of information is automatically true without the need for further evidence.
“We find a lot of instances where movies, TV shows, or whatever (teach) about something, whatever it could be, a place, a group of people that we’ve never seen before,” Smith said, adding that people will later realize that their original perception of the topic was incorrect due to learning about it from the media, rather than firsthand or real-world experience. “It really highlights how popular culture can inform us, but also sometimes lie to us.”
The inspiration for the presentation came from Smith’s experiences both inside and outside the classroom.
Outside of the classroom, it was the perceptions of strangers he met on an Alaskan cruise that brought on the idea for the presentation. With their only knowledge of what life in the South looked like being based on a popular TV show “Home Town,” which was set in Laurel, Miss., Smith was met with many questions about how accurate the portrayal was of people from the town.
“I think that we get an education from all the stuff we consume, but we always have to take that with a grain of salt and know that they’re going to show the most controversial,” Smith said. “Whatever gets the most views, clicks, likes, that’s the thing that people want to see, and so because of that, there’s a need to always analyze what we consume and say, ‘Is this real or is this a fictionalized version of what is real?’ And so that happens in history classes, and it all goes back to these biases of first learning.”
‘Light Bulb’ Moments in the Classroom
Inside the classroom, Smith aspires to create an environment where his students can have fun and learn something new.
“Dr. Smith brings much enthusiasm into every endeavor,” Julie Atwood, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Jones College, told the Mississippi Free Press. “He strives to always find news stories, topics and activities to maximize student engagement and encourage the learning process. The School of Humanities and Social Sciences is blessed to have him in our ranks.”
Even if students may not be interested in history or geography, Smith does his best to find something in which they can relate to the topic and bring them into the discussion. He does this by including pop-culture references in his lectures, relating current-day issues to those of the past or finding a way to apply the topic to students’ own experiences.
He hopes that by doing this, students can apply the examples to something they might experience in their own lives and, in doing so, gain a better understanding of the topic. Through this style of teaching, Smith wants students to gain more than an understanding of the subject; rather, he hopes they will see the bigger picture and become better equipped to make sense of the world around them.
“I had one young man I remember,” Smith said. “His face lit up, and the light bulb (went) off, and it’s like he’s getting it, and this may be the first time that history’s made sense to him, and it just is a good feeling.”
For some students, those light bulbs can lead to more than just an understanding of the subject; they can open doors to new possibilities. The first time a student told Smith that they wanted to switch their major because of his lessons was one he will never forget. Hearing that he made a subject fun helped Smith have his own light-bulb moment.
“You need people to help you make sense of the world around you and the things you see and the stuff you consume, and you need those people there to kind of point you in the right direction. You need guidance,” Smith said. “So, having people there to advise, to guide, to counsel, to just kind of give you that nudge in the right direction—it’s important because we need that in our lives.”
The Road to Teaching and Beyond
Originally from Collinsville, Mississippi, Caleb Smith’s uncle, who worked as a truck driver and lived next door to him growing up, introduced a young Smith to geography. His uncle would pull out an atlas to show Smith all the places he visited while working, which sparked Smith’s fascination for maps and later led to an interest in history. Receiving encouragement from his parents, who never went to college themselves, he went on to attend college to chase his passion for these fields.
After graduating from Mississippi State University with a bachelor’s degree in 2002, Smith began teaching at the high-school level. He went on to earn his master’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2006, continuing to work in education. He started pursuing a doctorate in 2013, finally earning his Ph.D from USM in 2019. The following year, Jones College offered him a teaching position, and he has worked at the Jones County school since accepting the role six years ago.
Outside of the classroom, Smith enjoys spending time with his family, playing disc golf, and traveling. He has visited every county in Mississippi, many states in the U.S. and a few countries abroad. His love for geography and history bleeds into many aspects of his life, whether it’s reading historical, research-based non-fiction books in his downtime or finding inspiration for his presentations while on a cruise.
While he isn’t a big fan of having to get dressed up to do so, Smith loves presenting for others. Although the Humanities Teacher of the Year Award is an honor and a professional accomplishment, Smith said having students select him as their favorite teacher of the year and hearing them describe the ways in which he motivated them in their classes is especially rewarding.
“The goal is to help them see a broader picture of the world, of the things that happen in history or whatever, and understand them a little better,” Smith said. “And so I love how that happens.”
The Jones College professor said he hopes his classroom is an inviting, friendly environment where students can learn and explore their own interests. If nothing else, Smith wants to at least inspire them to find what they love to do by setting an example through his own passion for teaching.
“Find what it is you love to do and find a way to get paid doing it,” Smith encouraged. “I love to teach, I love to talk to students and advise them and just work here, and I get paid to do it, which is awesome, and so I hope they find that, too.”
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