Missouri Representative, Hannah Kelly, reached out to Nicki Roy, English teacher, to congratulate the senior class on their senior projects. On Friday, April 8, during third hour Kelly took time to actually come and visit the seniors that participated in doing a senior project. She sat down with the students and discussed how much fun she had watching the projects, claiming she “facebook stalked” the students to see all of the projects.

Maycee Fishel, senior, based her senior project around the foster care system. She asked people in the community to donate items and she created 19 baskets. She delivered them to the Missouri Department of Social Services Family Support Division. During the meeting Kelly mentioned that senior project because she is currently a full time foster parent to a 17 year old daughter.

“I got licensed as foster parent after my last session, I couldn’t get it out of my head, I had all these reasons like I am going to make better legislation, I am gonna get licensed and understand what this about and I really had no interest in being a full time foster parent at that time. They say that if you decide to make that leap into foster parenting that you will eat your words and I ate my words, I have a full time daughter that is 17 and graduating next year, but I thought that project was really cool,” said Kelly.

Kelly went on to explain the fact that there are over 400,000 children in foster care and that Missouri has almost 13,000 of that 400,000. Fishel was told that by her senior project, she is impacting those kids in foster care and Kelly thought that was “super cool” as well.

Students began to tell Kelly what projects they hosted and how everyone was involved in those projects.

“I love how this is all single individual projects but you all are invested in each other projects,” said Kelly.

The floor was then opened up to students being able to ask Kelly questions about what her normal workday is like and questions based off of her jobs. Kelly is on the phone non-stop due to her job, she is a real-estate agent, a representative for Missouri and on top of it all, for now, she runs and owns a shop. She is a very busy women and students felt super appreciated that she took time out of her day to come visit them.

“I thought it was really neat that the State Representative took time to come talk to us because she saw our senior projects and thought they were cool,” said Maycee Fishel, senior, “She also remembered my project specifically when she was talking to us, so I thought that was really cool,”

After Kelly explained what her day on the job consisted of. She explained how people disagree with her and how she disagrees with people on a day to day basis. She also explained how being a woman in politics is hard because it can be seen as a weakness, when it is not one. She started with very little and has been in office for three years now and plans to keep going. She believes that “people don’t define who you are or what you do.”

“You are going to have moments in your life where you are like, I am young I can’t do this or People are not going to pay attention to me. Yes they will if you are wearing the right attire, you express and know what you believe, you know what you care about and you have those lined out in your heart and in your mind and you can articulate them,” said Kelly.