This school year, KLCC is celebrating educators through Inspiring Minds: Spotlighting Inspiration in Education. We’ve asked for you to share your stories of inspirational educators, and we’ve received a tremendous response.
There was one educator whose name appeared over and over in our Inspiring Minds inbox: Kelli Fisher.
Kelli is what her colleagues call “superwoman” at Mohawk Jr/Sr High School.
Here’s what a few fellow Mohawk teachers had to say when they nominated Kelli:
“Extremely energetic, caring, and just joyful to be around,” said James Tharp.
“Extremely reliable- she will make things happen,” said Billy Dahman.
“Incredibly charismatic, very driven and knowledgeable and skilled, in her field,” said Liz Lowry.
Kelli teaches science and Agriculture, coordinates the Health and Career and Technical Education programs, and she directs the Future Farmers of America chapter.
So, we took a trip out to Marcola to meet this Inspiring Mind.
First stop: her middle school Ag class. Her students were practicing Parliamentary Procedure, debating whether they should plant flowers or strawberries in the beds at the local community center, an opportunity that came their way after Kelli applied for and received a grant from Oregon Women in Agriculture.
“The whole point of middle school Ag is to give them an introduction to the skills that they need to be good entrepreneurs in the area of agriculture, which includes public speaking skills, and most of them happen to be members of some kind of organization, so how to run a proper meeting,” said Kelli. “And so that what they were doing for you is showing if we were to talk about something that would happen in our community or as a group, how do we do that? How do we debate it? How do we convince other people to follow us, right? What does that look like?”
Outside of the classroom, kids get their hands dirty on the two- acre-farm, complete with a greenhouse that’s situated across the street from the school. Kelli worked with a local farmer to get it up and running, and now they have a full farm to cafeteria program.
Nearly two years ago, some of Kelli’s students placed fourth in a state poultry judging competition. That lit a fire in her students, as they set their sights even higher. Kelli helped the students navigate fundraising, and thanks to community support, last fall she took a group of 11 Mohawk students to Indianapolis where they came close to gold, ending with an overall silver placement.
The Ag program is just one of the many Career and Technical Education programs at Mohawk.
“We also have a construction program here, we're working on a culinary program- there's lots of them,” said Kelli. “We're small, so it's hard to have a whole bunch of them, but within ag itself, I get to run welding manufacturing, food science, plant science, the animal science and business, that's ultimately what the career technical education is, is that people have the opportunity to be involved in hands on career related skills you know really give kids the opportunity to engage with the earth and the world around them and find some passion for themselves in this big array of things that we do, which also then like connects to like my welding class.”
That’s right: welding. Being in a small school, Kelli said that often means she has to go where her students take her.
“When I started this program, from total scratch, I had to start with what kids wanted. So I had to learn how to weld. I didn't know how to weld when I took this job, so I started going to conferences and learning. And then from there, I built what they wanted. It's taken me 10 years,” noted Kelli.
Wyatt Sweeney is a second-year welding student in Kelli’s class. Since being introduced to welding, Wyatt says he now sees this as his career path.
“It's a great trade to get into,” said Wyatt. “You get to travel places if you're on the road for pipeline welding. If you're a rig welder, you get to go out in the ocean, weld on oil rigs out there, and it's, you get to see some amazing places and, opens up a great job career.”
Wyatt attributes his love of welding to the encouragement he received from Kelli.
“You know, when you first get to meet her, she might think, oh, she's a little strict, but, she just, she knows what you're worth and she wants you to be the best you can,” said Wyatt. "She's helped me a lot with just progressing. In the beginning of my first year, I couldn't strike the arc. And she just said, ‘Wyatt, you're gonna be great one day and you can get through it.’ So she helped me get really good at it.”
In the end, Kelli says she’s not just teaching kids about a subject, she’s trying to meet them where they are in terms of what they need for an education:
“I want kids to want to learn. I want kids to want to love something in their lives and including themselves. To realize that they can be bigger and better than what they are and it doesn't matter where we start,” said Kelli. “Like we can take great kids. I always tell them that what I do is I take good kids and make them great. And that's my plan.”
Kelli Fisher, Inspiring Mind at Mohawk Jr/ Sr High School.
