Story and Photos By Peter Finney Jr., Clarion Herald Additional Photo | COURTESY ARCHBISHOP SHAW HIGH SCHOOL
Kati Boudreau Kelley, a 2006 graduate of Archbishop Chapelle High School, was just starting out on a career path that one day might have led to her becoming an executive chef when she finally had a brief, uninterrupted talk with herself.
Coming from a family of educators – her grandmother, Antoinette Bertucci, had taught for 31 years and even was the second-grade teacher for five of her seven grandchildren at St. Mary Magdalen School in Metairie – Kelley said she had “an epiphany” about her career choice.
“I was like, ‘What are you doing?’” Kelley said. “My end goal was always to be here at Chapelle. Let’s be real. I loved it when I was here.”
The pull of the uniform
Kelley was so enamored of her years as an Archbishop Chapelle student that on that fateful day of “Countdown” – when the seniors count down the seconds on their last day of high school, she didn’t want to take off her green-and-white uniform.
“Since we were the Class of 2006, we had to count down from 106 seconds,” Kelley said, laughing. “I kept my uniform on at home until my mom told me, ‘It’s OK to take your uniform off and go to bed.’ But I was dying. I didn’t want to take it off.”
Kelley is not a great deal older than the 13- or 14-year-old eighth-graders she now teaches critical reading and writing skills, but her enthusiasm to bridge their transition from elementary school to high school earned her recognition from the Louisiana Association of Computer Using Educators (LACUE) as middle-school teacher of the year in the New Orleans-area region.
Kelley was nominated for the award by science department chair Danielle Rohli.
“I observe her classroom and noticed that she was exceptional at integrating technology into her class,” Rohli said. “She’s a teacher leader. I mean, she’s young enough that she’s not scared of the technology, where those of us who are a little older are sometimes so intimidated by it.”
Life before cell phones
Kelley uses every bit of technology at her fingertips to capture the interest of her five classes of eighth-graders, and she is amazed at how much things have changed inside the classroom since she was wearing their uniforms.
“I’ve tried to tell them I didn’t get a cell phone until I was a junior, and they think that’s just the craziest thing ever,” Kelley said. “They can’t get over that. And, I had actual textbooks. I didn’t have a computer in my classroom.”
Kelley recalls the days when Chapelle had “three rolling carts” filled with laptops that were rotated among different classrooms and had to be signed out. Now, each student uses her own Google Chromebook in every class, replacing textbooks except in those rare classes such as English, where the girls still read some hard-print novels.
Because her class is intended to allow the students to dip their toe in the water and see what high school is all about, Kelley tries to make things as informal as possible.
A homey feel
In addition to regular desks, there are several canvas folding chairs for more comfortable seating.
“My nickname is the ‘8th Grade Mom,’” says Kelley, who has two daughters of her own, ages 5 and 2. “The girls spend a lot more time here than they do at home, sometimes, so I try to make it where they feel comfortable and at ease. That’s why they know all about my kids and my family. Some of my favorite teachers were the ones I actually got to know.”
For her classes, Kelley uses a touch-screen, interactive board – about the size of a large, flat-screen television – that serves as a self-contained computer.
She loads the class material, such as photographs, notes, YouTube videos, PowerPoint presentations or website links, from her laptop at home.
“So, when it’s time for me to teach, I don’t have to plug my computer into it,” Kelley said. “I don’t have to say, ‘Hang on, let me pull that up.’ My laptop is literally closed on my desk.”
The first nine weeks of the course covered the “dynamics of effective study,” which is the school’s conscious effort to get its new students acclimated to good study habits.
“It’s time management, organization, using a planner, things like that, things that a lot of them have never done,” Kelley said. “Then we moved into different styles of writing. The last nine weeks we looked at annotating informational text. I gave them an article, and they needed to read it and understand it and break it apart – like digging deeper than just what’s on the surface.”
Seeing the unseen
During a recent class, Kelley played an animated video called “French Roast,” where the characters in a small café – a waiter, a businessman, a nun and a homeless man – act in unsuspecting ways, proving the ultimate point “that you can’t judge a book by its cover.”
It was an exercise in “compare and contrast,” she said.
Kelley works with Chapelle’s eighth-grade English teacher to shore up areas where new students might need extra help. They use software called “IXL” to practice writing skills.
“With some of the eighth graders, it’s kind of like, ‘OK, I’m in high school, what do I do now?’” Kelley said. “Some of them have been babied a little bit. Now that they’re in high school, we have to clip their wings a little bit and let them fly.”
Another online program, “Revision Assistant,” is like the grammar and writing police on steroids, giving instant feedback on mistakes in grammar, spelling, subject-verb agreement and tone.
Acronyms won’t cut it
In an era of online shorthand such as “LOL” (laughing out loud), “SMH” (shaking my head) and “BRB” (be right back), formal writing skills are more important than ever, Kelley said.
Recent Chapelle graduates returned to campus last week to speak to the entire student body, and they told their younger peers exactly that.
“All of the girls agreed that you have to be able to write (well) when you go to college,” Kelley said. “You go from writing just a couple of paragraphs to ‘here’s a Blue Book; you have an hour to fill it out.’ So, we start that practice early on. The ‘Revision Assistant’ checks things for them while they do it, and we’ve seen huge growth because they get instant feedback, and it’s different feedback than maybe a teacher would give.”
Kelley cautions her students not to believe or reprint whatever they see on the Internet.
“We talk about using reliable sources,” she said. “We tell them very quickly not to go to Wikipedia because people can change it. You have to be smart when you’re looking at stuff. Don’t believe what’s on social media. They can Photoshop anything, they can change stuff. I always tell them, ‘When in doubt, go back to a printed copy, an encyclopedia or a trusted web site.’”
Your dog did what?
The era of “the dog ate my homework” has gone the way of gasoline station attendants, but Kelley says she’s heard just about everything in the way of 21st century homework excuses.
“Oh, they’ll tell me their Internet went out last night, and my response is, ‘I never give you something the day before. You knew this was going to be due and you shouldn’t have waited until the last minute,” Kelley said. “It’s not so much that they lost it; they say it’s because their Chromebook was dead.”
Chapelle makes it clear that students must come to school with a fully charged computer. No charging is allowed at school, a practice that promotes personal responsibility.
Kelley was extremely close to her teaching grandmother, Antoinette Bertucci, and she also is following in the footsteps of her aunt and godmother, longtime elementary school principal Shirley Bertucci.
Antoinette’s three granddaughters all became teachers. Antoinette died of cancer when Kelley was in the eighth grade at Chapelle.
“When she taught us, she did not treat us differently,” Kelley said. “She made it known on Day One that yes, we were her grandkids, but we were students and we wouldn’t get special treatment. She kept to her word. I think teaching is very much in our blood.”
Kelley said the special award recognition is meaningful not just because of her own efforts but also because she shares in the teaching vocation with her colleagues.
“Teaching is exhausting, but it’s rewarding,” she said. “When you have a student figure it out, you say, ‘OK, this is why I’m doing this!’
“It’s so nice to be recognized by an administrator for all the hard work. It’s just nice for somebody to say, ‘Nice job.’ It’s not like when you leave campus for the day, you’re done. I’m constantly thinking of something or I’m looking for something. The wheels are always turning.”
She can’t think of teaching anywhere beside Chapelle.
“It’s just home,” Kelley said. “Everybody is here for you. They’re all cheering you on. If you’re having a bad day, it’s one big family. I know it sounds so ridiculous, but it is true.”
January 23, 2020