Belinda Kell, 1st Grade Teacher

SFUSD K-5 Public Elementary School

Ms. Belinda Kell, 1st grade teacher
       Ms. Kell has worked within SFUSD since 2015, working as either a 1st grade, 4th grade or a Substitute teacher. Passionate about teaching she strives to engage and inspire a students own love for reading, writing, math and sciences.  Prior getting her credential she taught swim lessons, tutored and volunteered as a leader at Jumpstart with the goal of helping underprivileged Pre-K students prepare for Kindergarten.  Ms. Kell studied Psychology with a Minor in Literature/Writing at UC San Diego.  While in college she also volunteered and lead 2 organizations.  The first being “Art for Change”.  Doing various pieces of art around campus her group joined with Heifer International to raise money to donate livestock to families around the world.  In the last year of her undergraduate studies she also helped organize an exhibition around reading, books and the prison system.  This exhibit displayed handwritten letters from current prisoners about books that inspired, could help or had helped them in the past.  Interactive, visitors could read the letters and then donate the book that the writer was talking about.
      Always drawn to the beach and water Ms. Kell grew up in sunny Southern California.  She played Water Polo and swam for over 9 years.  During that time her team was able to go numerous times to the Junior Olympics, the highest medal she was able to achieve was silver, though her team also had placed 3rd and 4th in other years.  Traveling is another passion of hers.  Her last major trip was to Tokyo, Japan where she was able to climb Mt. Fuiji, see the Imperial Place and accidentally eat horse (she thought it was fish).  Her 2 next big dream trips would be to go to Egypt to see the pyramids and pretend she is Indiana Jones and to see the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia where she also wants to pretend that she is a tomb raider.