Kelly Rinaldi has taught just about every school subject for almost 20 years, including both physics and chemistry in Española District Schools, but the New Mexico native had aspirations of doing more for her students. Now she’s getting the opportunity.
On Feb. 1, she took over as assistant principal at Española Valley High School, a career move she had been considering since she obtained her administrative license more than four years ago.
Originally from Sandia Park in Bernalillo County, after teaching in San Antonio Texas and various other locations, Rinaldi made her way back to the Land of Enchantment in 2015.
“My husband works for Los Alamos County with the Fire Department, his career made us move around quite a bit,” she said. “Before this, we were in Idaho, we lived in Cortez, Colorado, and I also taught down in Shiprock on the reservation for about seven years.”
She said she also worked in Florida, but was not fond of the humidity.
Rinaldi said she loves science, since she’s a hands-on type of person. Growing up, she spent a lot of time outdoors, working with animals or participating in sports.
According to her resume, Rinaldi holds a masters degree in leadership and policy studies from the University of Texas at Arlington, where she graduated in 2012.
She also earned a bachelors degree in biology from West Texas A&M University in 1996, in addition to numerous Department of Education certifications.
The transition from the classroom to administration has not been easy for Rinaldi, but she said her motivation was to do more for her students.
“I love the classroom,” she said. “I was just looking for the perfect setting and the perfect group of people. After working with the students here, I found they are the nicest, kindest and most deserving students I have ever worked with. I wanted more for them and so I thought to myself, the only way that I could give them more was to become an administrator. There’s only so much I can do in my classroom.”
Rinaldi said she felt she was being a hypocrite if she didn’t aim for more.
“I always preach to my students to challenge themselves,” she said. “I felt like I wasn’t challenging myself because the classroom is a safe place for me and I needed a new challenge.”
The new administrator’s office is sparsely decorated with physics toys and unique items, which express her style and personality and pay homage to her educational career.
Students in Idaho in her metal shop classes made the copper sign which hangs in her office and reads, “$5 fine for whining,” while a plush eagle from the first school she taught at in San Antonio, Texas, is perched on a wood cabinet high above her desk.
“I am sort of fun-loving and I have a lot of toys,” she said while grabbing an origami dragon from her desk, another present from a former student.
Yet, her playful personality belies an intensity and desire to help her students succeed and get them excited about science and academics.
Rinaldi can be stern when she needs to be, like when she helped security break up a scuffle outside her office during an interview for this story.
She said promoting high academic standards at Española Valley High School is a strong motivation and a challenge from which she won’t back away.
Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said the hiring committee interviewed two other candidates for the position in January, but felt Rinaldi was the best applicant, based on her experience and knowledge of the school and District.
“That, coupled with her ‘can do’ attitude, high energy level and enthusiasm for working with our students at Española Valley High School, won her the selection committee’s recommendation,” she said.
Raising the bar
Rinaldi said she feels students in the Española District have an unfair reputation. She said people don’t realize how bright and capable they are.
In order to change this perception, the former teacher aims to change the school’s culture.
“I am talking about a culture that celebrates student success, instead of harping on all the bad stuff,” she said. “There are so many good things that occur here, that we need to start celebrating those things.”
Rinaldi wants to make it more of an academic culture by offering more advanced classes and helping students prepare for future careers by offering vocational programs, in addition to academic offerings.
“Right now, we’ve got students that don’t quite get it,” she said. “They run through the classrooms or they are out in the hallways and they’re not in class and they don’t understand that they need to be in the classroom to get that instruction.”
A focus in standardized testing in recent years has led the state’s Public Education Department to invest more resources in reading and language arts. Rinaldi said resources need to also be directed toward supporting science and math instruction.
“I think it’s extremely important since the (Los Alamos) Lab is just up the road,” she said. “Those jobs there are incredible jobs, it’s important for the students to get into science, technology, engineering and math careers because that’s where careers are going to be at in the future.”
Rinaldi said learning has to be relevant to students to pique their interest.
“A lot of them are athletes,” she said. “I can easily take physics and make it relevant to them because of sports. We made rockets out of hydrogen and oxygen in chemistry lab. You gotta make learning fun. That’s one thing I want to do here. Make learning fun, so students want to come here.”
While teaching in Shiprock, she offered a marine science class in the middle of the desert and had three students recently graduate with marine science degrees.
“We worked with the Colorado Division of Wildlife,” she said. “We worked directly with their biologists and we would catch the salmon. They take their eggs to a hatchery because they won’t survive on their own. We helped them catch 800 salmon every year. I catch students this way, they get hooked on science.”
Rinaldi said the hardest part about her transition into administration has been leaving behind the classroom because she misses interacting with her students on a daily basis.
Now, she is working with adults, helping teachers directly. She said the big challenge is working with people who know their job, who have been doing it for a long time.
She is trying to get them to buy into her way of doing things and trying new things — like a coach teaching players from a new playbook.
She said she still interacts with her students and visits them.