From Serendipity to Teaching Excellence

0:00 Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I am Devin Pintosi, your host, and we are here at LICU speaking with Kelly Freelo. She is with St Matthew's School in the New Orleans Archdiocese. It's nice to see you, Kelly. Thank you, it's nice to be here. Yes, I understand you teach science, is that right? Yes, I do Middle school science. Wonderful. So tell us a little bit about what brings you to LICU. LICU is a technology conference and every year my school comes to learn more about what we can do in our school for technology. Oh, that's wonderful, and so tell us a little bit about your journey.

0:41 How did you decide to become a teacher? Well, I graduated from a Catholic college I'll lay it a whole across college and I just basically needed a job. And my dad knew someone a principal and I got a job teaching fifth grade and after a while I was like, do I want to keep doing this? I had a child and I moved across the river and I took a job over there and I was like, do I want to keep doing this? I had a child and I moved across the river and I took a job over there and I was like, well, if I like it, I'll keep doing it. And then that was 20, 18 years ago because I taught there for five years and I was like yes, I like it. So I've been teaching for 23 years. Gosh, that is wonderful so it wasn't my first thing I wanted to do, but it ended up being what I love.

1:27 Oh, that is wonderful. Can you tell us a bit about a story where you had an impact in a student's life? Oh goodness, you're putting me on the spot. Well, I know recently, something that I did that I didn't think that I would be able to accomplish has put an impact on a lot of the middle school. Well, two things I can tell you two things um, I wrote a grant for the first time ever in my entire teaching career and for some um, vr goggles the virtual reality goggles and I didn't think I thought maybe I'd get like $100, $200. I ended up getting $15,000. So we got a class set for all the kids to use for the VR goggles and they love it and it impacts every single subject that we teach even religion, because they can see different artifacts and just step into different worlds.

2:22 It's really cool and they can do their own things and just step into different worlds. It's really cool and they can do their own things and put it into the virtual reality. So that was pretty cool. I thought that was impactful and I do. This is something that I'm praying that we get. We do a, not a contest, it's an experiment with NASA and if you get your experiment chosen, then you get 1500 to build your experiment and um and you're able to work with nasa engineers to um where they put your experiment. It goes to stratosphere and you test something like based on what your experiment is, and those kids are so excited about it and just the looks on their faces like did you hear from them yet?

3:06 Did you hear from them yet? Like it's just that was that just makes my heart melt. So I'm praying that we get it. That's awesome, an experiment on NASA. Yeah, it's cool. Fantastic, that is great. So what are you hoping to get from LICU and what are you hoping to give back to the community when you go back to St Matthews? Well, this year especially, we have now a design and innovation lab and we have someone who's certified in education technology and she runs the lab. It's right across the hall from me, which is lucky for me, and we're an Apple school, so we do a lot everything on iPads, and so in our design and innovation lab we have 3D printers, we have VR goggles, we have green screens anything you can think of like that that we do projects into.

4:00 You know, you learn about it, and then we put the project into the um, the ipad or whatever kind of thing that you're doing, a keynote or whatever but, um, like recently, we were learning about cells and, um, the kids had to draw a cell and label it an animal or plant cell, and then they put it into this um, this program reality composer, and you hold the iPad up and it looks like it's floating. Wow. So they can go and they had to talk about it. So when they get close they hit, play and they hear their voice talking about parts of the cell and everything. So I'm hoping to learn more about things that I can bring into the classroom and back into helping Kimmy Klotz, who is the Design innovation lab coordinator, work with her to be able to do more things like that.

4:53 Oh, that is wonderful. And, kelly, do you have anything you'd like to say to the Likud community? I've been here for the last. I don't even know how many years I've been coming, but I think it's wonderful. I've learned a for the last. I don't even know how many years I've been coming, but I think it's wonderful. I've learned a lot about AI. That's another thing that I was into a few years ago that I think I've learned not as much as I can, but a lot about it, and they have a lot of Apple stuff that I really enjoy going to and there's always something. There's never a session time where you can't find something like it's it's really good. I love bringing that stuff back to school that is awesome. Well, thank you very much. This is uh kelly freelo with saint matthew's school in the archdiocese of new orleans.

5:38 Thank you so much for participating with us today thank you.