Math teacher Kelly Maisel has only ever wanted to make her family proud. Graduating in the top tenth percentile of her high school class, Maisel became the first in her family to go to college. To her, attending college was what would make her family the proudest.

“I wanted to make sure I was able to do that for (my mom),” Maisel said. “She probably doesn’t remember that, but that was so long ago.”

Maisel decided to apply for a job at this school after noticing an opening, and is more than happy with her decision.

“I live pretty close by, and I actually had a few friends that went here when they were in high school. A few of my coworkers were actually friends of mine when I was in college,” Maisel said. “They always talked about how great it was here and after I interviewed, I was like, “oh my goodness, I can’t believe I would want to pick anywhere else that wasn’t here.” I just felt very welcomed and felt good coming here.”

Maisel’s dad never got the chance to go to college. When he was a senior in high school, he was drafted into the Vietnam war. When he came back, he did what most people did for a living at the time. He became a factory worker. Maisel knew that being a factory worker was not what she wanted to do with her life, and knew that she wanted to pursue a career in teaching.

       “I’ve always wanted to teach. I’m going to tell you I didn’t know what I wanted to teach until I got to college,” Maisel said. “When I got to college, I actually talked to my high school math teacher and she was like “I think you should consider doing something different” so I was like “what?” I decided to pick math because, I figured, I had some math teachers that weren’t the best when I was in high school, and I wanted to be the opposite of that, I wanted my students to actually understand and get math because I had to teach it myself when I was in high school for a lot of the year, so it was kind of tough.”