Carle Place Middle\/High School<\/a> for the past 10 years, Kelly attended district schools from second grade on when her family moved from Flushing. She graduated from Carle Place in 2010. <\/p>\nAs they say around town, Kelly\u2019s a real \u201cFrog,\u201d the nickname for the school\u2019s sports teams. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m teaching my friends\u2019 kids,\u201d said Kelly, 33, who lives in Huntington. \u201cI\u2019m teaching my colleagues\u2019 kids. It\u2019s a special kind of place.\u201d <\/p>\n
Students gravitate to Kelly because she\u2019s so approachable, according to Carle Place Middle\/High School Principal Allen Foraker. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe always makes time for her students,\u201d Foraker said. <\/p>\n
As a teacher, Kelly, who holds a doctorate in transformational leadership from Long Island University, is creating the kinds of leadership opportunities for students that helped shape her. <\/p>\n
As a student, Kelly was active in a host of extracurricular activities, including editing the yearbook her junior and senior years. <\/p>\n
She\u00a0distinguished herself as a hard worker who paid attention to detail, said Rosa Perifimos, who was the yearbook adviser and Kelly\u2019s Spanish teacher. <\/p>\n
Kelly was also elected class president from eighth grade through 11th grade. <\/p>\n
But the one election Kelly lost turned out to be the most valuable, she said. <\/p>\n
Near the end of her junior year, Kelly ran for president of the Student Organization, which represents pupils in grades seven through 12. <\/p>\n
Losing was \u201cdevastating,\u201d Kelly remembered. <\/p>\n
It was one of Kelly\u2019s teachers, Maddalena Buffalino, who helped her rebound. <\/p>\n
As senior class adviser, Buffalino created a role for Kelly as class representative. <\/p>\n
Kelly said being given a role \u201clet me find my voice.\u201d <\/p>\n
For Kelly, teaching doesn\u2019t stop when the school day ends. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s very big on lessons that go beyond the classroom,\u201d said English teacher Samuel Plotkin, a friend and colleague for 10 years. <\/p>\n
Kelly organized an eight-day service trip last February for 10 seniors to volunteer at a school in Guatemala. She and Plotkin chaperoned the students, who built sanitation stations at the school. <\/p>\n
Jimmy Coronel, whose daughter Luna went on the trip,\u00a0said it was a bonding experience for the Carle Place students. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they came back, they were all really tight,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Kelly\u2019s interest in organizing the trip to Guatemala stems from her interest in travel. She\u2019s been to 45 countries so far, with a trip to Uganda up next.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Kelly is also adviser to the Student Organization at Carle Place and director of student activities. <\/p>\n
In 2023, she launched the Carle Place Leadership Symposium, which each year brings together hundreds of student leaders from across Long Island to share ideas on how to improve the student experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jill Kelly is one teacher who proves you can go home again. Now a high school Spanish teacher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[67,9,11,10,49,51,50,38754],"class_list":{"0":"post-77710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-new-york-state","13":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-state-news","15":"tag-togetherli"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}