242. Student Agency in Trade Schools with Mary Kelly

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In this episode, we sit down to talk with Mary Kelly, CEO of StrataTech Education Group, which provides adult education programs for trades like refrigeration or welding. 

Mary shares the impact of her own high school teacher, who changed her life trajectory and ignited her passion for education. Together, we discuss the transformative power of education—including for adults—the systemic issues perpetuating inequality, and the potential of skilled trades to level the playing field. 

The Big Dream

Mary’s dream is for education to be available to everybody, no matter where they’re from. She recognizes that many people were born into negative and challenging circumstances, but education is the way out—it’s the way for upward mobility. But the access to education has to be there. 

Mindset Shifts Required

“Fixing the education system” or providing access to education is overwhelming—no one person can change it. But educators and leaders can consider what’s in their sphere of influence and where they can influence positive change. 

Another mindset shift Mary advocates for is around the trades. Those taking trades are not just the “dumb kids,” because many of them are making millions as plumbers or in other roles. There needs to be a shift in different paths and not putting students or people into only one category. 


Equity in Education: Exploring the Trades

Mary discusses her experience managing trade schools and how they’re a space of equitable education for anyone interested in learning. Open enrollment means students don’t need to test to qualify for the classes; they just need to be willing to do the work. 

The student self-identifies their ability and interest in the program and then pursues it; this is a revolutionary approach to education, where we often rely on testing and putting students in a box rather than relying on their individual agency.

Education in the trades is all related to the job—everything they learn applies to what they want to do. This can be a motivating environment because the students are learning an application rather than being “talked at” in some more traditional school settings.

Mary also discusses the benefits of the for-profit model. Because students are paying, they’re committed. Further, they’re the customer, so the school works to support them in any way they can, creating a positive place for students to reach their goals. 


One Step to Get Started

For educators striving to show up for their students better, Mary recommends starting with this question: Look at what you’re offering and see if you’re meeting every individual’s needs, or is it just based on the group. It’s important to work with each student individually and meet their unique needs. 

To connect with Mary, you can visit the corporate website, StrataTech Education Group, or email her at [email protected]. 

If you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 242 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.


Quotes: 

• 16:14 “There’s more questioning of the traditional system than ever. First off, why does a kid have to go to college? They may not even have to go to trade school… There are places in high school where they’re creating employer-school relationships where the student can go right to work.” 

• 17:20 “I think we forget that our kids know.”
• 24:51 “The outcome is they have to be able to do it, but 20 kids on the floor doing it all in very different ways.” ​

​​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Mary, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

00:03 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
Thank you. 

00:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm excited to be here, lindsay. Listeners will have just heard the formal bio at the start of the show, but I wanted to invite you to share anything else. That is something people should keep in mind as they're engaging with the episode and as we kind of jump into our conversation today. It can be personal, professional, what's on your mind today, anything you think, oh my God, a lot's on my mind today. 

00:26 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
There's a lot of craziness going on. We don't have time for all that. So I guess probably the one question I get a lot look, I'm a CEO of a very large organization in a predominantly male space, so I do get a lot of questions like how did that happen? And I have to tell you, lindsay, it's totally by accident. So I did not wake up one day and say, guess what? I want to be CEO. 

00:54
I came from a very large family and there were problems in my family. My dad was an alcoholic and I kept getting these high IQ scores but I wasn't doing well in school and all they kept doing was testing me but nobody really kind of asked the question that needed to be asked, right? So I get into high school and I had an English teacher in high school who actually asked me the question. She said you're so smart, why is there something going on? Specifically said, is there something going on at home? And I cried and I tried. I never had had that conversation and you know what, for the first time in my life I felt like I was seen at school and it it changed the trajectory of my life. It really did, and at that point, subconsciously, I said to myself this is what I want to do. I want to help kids like me and I want to go into teaching. And so I went into teaching thinking I was going to be a teacher. Right, that's another story. 

01:53
I did teach for a little while. I hated, to be honest with you. I hated the public system. I love my kids, but there was a lot of politics. I'm just not. What you see is what you get from me. I'm a New Yorker and I just couldn't do the politics and I spoke out too much and, uh, long story short, I was pretty miserable. 

02:11
A friend of mine was working in adult ed and said have you ever thought of working with adults? And I'm like I don't know. I want to make a difference. They're already. They're already adults. I can't make a difference there. And I went to work for Bryan and Stratton, which is a business college in New York fantastic school and my very first job with adults was teaching English and math fundamentals. And, lindsay, I fell in love. These were my people. These were people that had been dismissed as troublemakers. You'll never be anything, but they were so smart. No one had ever given them a chance and no one had seen them. And so that was my foray into adult education. 

02:50
Years later I ended up kind of a you heard my bio, I you know for a little. I was in there for a while. Then I thought I was working for a nonprofit, for a for-profit school. I said, oh, for-profit's bad. And I went to work for a nonprofit school Guess what they're the same. It's about getting people enrolled right. And I worked for a great. I worked for New School University in New York, which was great, but it was all the same. And I found that the for-profits, the good ones and there's a lot of good ones you never hear about A lot of people doing really good work. They're out there and they're responding to a need that nobody else is serving, and up until recently they were the only ones servicing a particular group. So, but long story short, I left there and I went into the nonprofit world. I said these people are crazy. I ran back to education. So you know what? And I you know I've been in it ever since and I found my. 

03:44
I was working at Lincoln education. They had 38 schools up and down the East coast. Um, I, I became a campus president, a group vice president kept moving up, um, but I was in medical and allied health and I really wanted to get into the skilled trades. Uh, but I was really good at what I did and I just couldn't do it at Lincoln and the old CEO of Lincoln started. This company had been coming after me for a while and I said, yep, I get to go do the skill trades, let me do it. And you know, I had been teaching, I'd been in education for a long time at that point and I didn't think there was more to show me. But, man, I fell in love again. I fell in love again and I've been here for 15 years and it's been a blast and I work with amazing people here. So so kind of a long story, but that's, that's the story. And here I am. 

04:29 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love it. Oh, I love that backstory and I love that it's grounded in kind of just a simple question. That was transformative for you right, thinking about the power that educators hold to influence students' sense of belonging and their life trajectories. I mean, it's a beautiful story that illustrates that potential and that positive opportunity that we all have in education space. So thank you for that. I think you know this is probably connected to what you were just sharing, but I'm curious to know. I often ask the question at the start of these shows. You know, dr Bettina Love describes the idea of freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, and so I'm always curious what that big dream is that guests hold for the education space. So do you mind telling us about what that big dream might be? 

05:16 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
for you Right. I want education to be available to everybody, no matter where you're from, and to be the difference maker. For you Right? And I think there's a lot of people that have pointed that out. I think you know there's a lot of people that are born on the wrong side of the tracks. They didn't do anything wrong, they just were born in a certain area and they have access to the worst of everything. Right, but education can be that one thing that lifts them out of that. How many stories have we heard about people that come from there through an education? 

05:52
That is the way for upward mobility, and I want that for everybody in this country, and unfortunately, right now, there's a lot of people that don't have that and aren't having access to it and don't know how to get it, and so my dream is that someday it'll be very easy for everyone to be able to access that and we can go back to being. Look, america is not an ideal. We were the American dream, right, it was come here and you can be anything you want if you work hard enough. It's not true anymore. You could work your butt off and you still may not be able to get where you need to get and that's not correct, like we need to look at that as a society and say where do we go off the rails here? And part of it is the education system. 

06:34 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Oh my gosh, yeah, absolutely. There are so many pieces of the education system that are just not. Oh my God. 

06:39 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
I know, I just want you to look. I'm a huge fan of public education. I do believe that everybody should have access. So you know, I just want to throw that out. I do think that looking at the economy and having a free market helps make things better, having that competition I think all those pieces are important, right. When you base education funding on tax dollars, you're in trouble. There's always going to be inequality, like it's just an unequal system that was built from the start. So get rid of the system and figure out a better way. And it's not the lottery either. 

07:17 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Great point. So, yeah, I'm curious to know, I guess in the rest of the time that we have together, like, how do we accomplish that, or how have you kind of accomplished that right? I mean, I think there's probably several things that go into it. I often ask about you know, mindset shifts for educators and ways that we kind of move away from that traditional mindset that like, oh okay, you're, you know, born with wealth, so you're going to have all of these AP opportunities or you know whatever it is, and there's also kind of like concrete actions that education systems and educators in classrooms can take. I'm curious, like, feel free to go either direction, both directions, like mindsets or actions. What have you seen be successful? 

08:01 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
I love how you're thinking and they're great questions. I think. I think that's a loaded, a loaded question in many ways Right, and so a lot of times, like you know, I will say this I'm going to go off track for a minute, but you know I have a lot of friends, we've been around for a while, you know, and we talk about stuff and and, and some of my friends are getting a little disenfranchised and like, oh my God, all these bad things are happening. My belief is that most people are good, most people are good and you see that, like when nine 11 happened, when there's a crisis that happens when the Houston floods came, I mean people all jump in. It doesn't matter if you're an immigrant or a non-immigrant. Like everybody was in Texas when they had the Houston floods, you had people that were jumping in boats and saving people, right, like everybody was in it together and for that moment we were together, right, and I think generally that's where people are, but they get so overwhelmed by how much there is to do. So your question is a little overwhelming Like, how do you fix, like, this whole broken system? And you asked me how I do it. 

09:10
Like, for me, I obviously haven't, I haven't fixed it. But I come from a place of what can I do in my sphere of influence? Right, like I told you my story, if someone made a difference to me, how can I make a difference in the people that I'm around and that I'm exposed to and that I can affect? Right, the skill trades is, as part of that, has really spoken to me. Um, because you're getting a group of people quite honestly like, if you look at our country, like who took shot, people took shop classes. They said, oh, only the dumb kids take shop classes. You have millionaire plumbers. These people aren't dumb, they were actually smart, they were smarter than most of us. You know, I got out with an English degree. I wasn't making anywhere near what my friends who started their own business and were in the skill trades were doing, right, so I think that's part of it. Like in the edge, in the part of the, the story that we sold, we're seeing that it's wrong. You see Gen Z today and they're saying what am I going to spend for college and why am I going to spend it? Is it worth it? What am I going to get out of it? Right, and that's a legitimate question. And in the skill trades. You have a way of equalizing what education made unequal. Right Kids were put in track. I actually don't believe in track systems. I don't believe in that at all. I think you probably know this right. Research has totally shown that when you mainstream people, they do better. 

10:40
My older brother is, I think, joe's 60. Well, maybe he's just 69. He's going to be 70. Joe's awesome. He was borderline when he was born, so they used forceps. He was in a military hospital. My father was military for a while and so at that time, I mean, he was borderline. If he had put in a mainstream classroom his life would have been very different, but he wasn't. He was put in special classes and so you know the Pygmalion effect right, he rose to what level they were expecting and his life turned out very different. I mean, he's great, he's married and all that. But what could it have been if we had just mainstreamed them, right? So I got totally off track and forgot where I was going. 

11:27 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Great point. You're free to redirect me, yeah, so I mean I think the track system I'd love to jump on there. You're absolutely right. The research shows that there is only disastrous effects of that. It doesn't serve anyone. And so I think about that in terms of how you know, both like thinking about how people choose to enroll in the skills trades and in a school such as that or such as that. But I also think about you know how the school itself is operating right in the skills trades, like how, how you kind of do away with that. So can you take us kind of behind the scenes of like what is the structure of your system and kind of how do you kind of push back against that? 

12:10 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
Sure, well, listen, everyone's equal. Like, we have an open enrollment. So if you want to learn how to do welding and you've never done it before, come on down and we have. You know we put out over 5000 graduates a year, right, I have five schools soon to be another school, very large schools, so, like the Houston school is about 1,300. They all range about a thousand, but it's open enrollment. I mean, you're paying for the to go to school. So who am I to say you can't, right? I literally, to be honest with you, I have had in welding. We actually had two. Well, we've had three students. 

12:45
I know just at my Jacksonville campus, um, that uh were physically handicapped and I was like, hey, are we doing the wrong thing by letting them in? And my people were like, they say they can do it. We got to give them a chance. Two of them were deaf. They're out working in the welding world, right, they knew what they could do. 

13:06
So so there isn't, from the very get-go, there's not an inequality. Like you don't get tested and then put in a track, everybody's in the same track together and you're really just learning a skill. So part of it, too, is they're not spending a lot of time on academic subjects, right. I will say, though, like when you're in HVvac and electrical, there's a lot of theory there. I mean, you have to learn ohm's law, you have to learn quite a bit. So, and and students will decide where they want to go, like. If it's you know they, if it's someone who really doesn't want to, like, get into the books, they may go into welding, and so what's really cool for our guys is, if you're going to have to take some stuff, right, but if you're going go into welding, you're only going to spend. Out of five days, only one day is going to be classroom, right. 

13:48
It's going to be online, which we pivoted during COVID for that, and our students don't want to have to spend gas money and go to school every day, right. So we try to create a robust online experience only for the didactic, because the skills you have to do inside, what are you going to learn on that didactic? You're not going to learn English composition you don't need to know that as a welder but you are going to learn about gases and how you use gases, right. You're going to learn to read blueprints, because you can't be a welder without reading blueprints. So what you're learning is completely relevant to what you're doing, and I think that's partly what we've missed, like I know, way back when I was in school and trying to look at it in an education classroom, they were talking about, you know, trying to integrate the curriculum. 

14:33
I don't think we've done that at all. I mean, we've actually moved away from that and we've gotten told to teach it to the test. And so when you integrate the curriculum and something that's relevant for the student, they're going to be more interested. Right, the students aren't't good. Students don't want to sit there and have someone be Charlie Brown and wonk wonk wonk at them. Right, they want to know. How does this make sense to me? How can I apply this right? And that's our job as teachers to give them that Absolutely. 

15:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I mean, I think so much about the ratio of being talked at and, like you know, learning new content versus application. Or just let me do the thing in traditional schools right, it's probably backwards, right, it's probably four times is the talking and then one day maybe is an application versus that one to four that you have, which is just so awesome. And I also am hearing, like you know, whatever someone's physical capacities or whatever someone's kind of limiting beliefs that you know adults or educators may have of of students, it's like, no, the student knows, like you said, like the student knows what they're capable of, what they're interested in. Let them do the thing. 

15:40
I mean that is that is revolutionary in education, because that's not what we do, right? We, like you said, we do tracking or we test kids and then we put them in boxes and we, how cool would it be if everyone did that when it was like, oh, you want to take that course, great, go for it, we've got you Right, like I. Just that's not the way that it usually is. And think of how agentic students I mean I imagine you know or like how agentic students feel when it's like, oh, I get to decide. That's so cool, absolutely. 

16:11 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
Absolutely, I think. I think the good news is, I think we're trying to, we're starting to move forward as people are questioning there's more questioning of the traditional system than ever, right? I mean there's questions like why, why, first off, does a kid have to go to college right, and why, first off, does a kid have to go to college right and they may not even have to go to trade school? I mean there's places where in high school, you know they're creating employer high school relationships where the student can go right to work. I'm all for that right. 

16:37
The apprenticeship model I mean that's used very well in other countries. We've not done well with that. All of those things are really important. I do think kids know and I think as parents I'm a parent I thought I knew better and you know, I'll tell you our youngest she just got her should be, but she knew, she knew where she ended, where she was supposed to be, she met her guy there, that's. You know she's been with a lot like. She just knew how to follow our path and I think we forget that our kids know right, that is so beautiful. 

17:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I think my the start of my kind of professional journey really is rooted in student voice and, like the student voice, research field and all of that, and so that absolutely speaks, speaks to me, and I think about the capacity students have to, you know, pursue whatever educational course they want, but also to to do things that are meaningful in their communities. 

17:44
So civic action or civic engagement. I think about, like you know, the welder who, or the plumber who is like an integral member of the community, cause what would the community do without access to that skill? Right, I mean thinking about that. Community connectedness and the agency students have, not in their own lives but in the lives of those around them, is so cool, and I think you've illuminated for me just different ways that your organization does things compared to traditional schooling. Is there anything else that we should know? You know, for those of us who haven't actually, like been in a school like those that you have, what else is different, you know, for the better, from traditional ways we might school kids? That is, you know, more equitable or more student oriented. 

18:26 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
Yeah. So I would say, well, look first off, we're for profit, right, and one of the beautiful things of the for profits that people never talk about is, if a student is paying their money, they're making a choice. So what that group of schools have done really, really well, and some of them there were bad actors there, just like there are bad actors elsewhere. Right, it's mostly at the degree level, it's not, you know, at the lower level, but what they've done well is being able to figure out how to keep there's a lot of student services. So you see, a lot of public education. Now higher education is all moving to student retention and bringing in student retention teams. We've been doing that for years. Right, like all this. If you look at like Southern New Hampshire, right, like big, big school, paul LeBlanc, who did a fantastic job taking that to where it was and becoming a big player, will tell you that he based his model off of University of Phoenix, right, and University of Phoenix out there now is getting a bad rap and people are saying, oh, they just took their money and da da da, university of Phoenix, and that's what it started at. It started as a way to help adult people be able to go to school and meet their schedule. The student's a customer. Everyone that works for me. We have over 500 and I think 540 employees at this point. Right, we've grown a lot. It's because they know the student is the customer, right, and I'm really lucky because I have a ton of people that work for me that are here for the mission and I'm really lucky because I have a ton of people that work for me that are here for the mission. They all understand that these students are coming to us somewhere. If they're right out of high school, they're doing it because you know they got to do something right or they've always wanted to do this. 

20:06
If we've had people that are 60 years old, we get people that are you know, further on in adulthood, that are working in dead end jobs and they can't support their family and they're like I got to do something and somebody told them hey, the skilled trades is probably a good place. They come and talk to us and we're able to kind of direct them where they need to go, Right, like that's who's coming to us. My people all understand what a difference it makes. They're all here short term, they're about seven months in and they can work while they're here, because it's part-time right, because most of my people need to work. 

20:36
I don't have really wealthy people going to school, right. I have a lot of pell grant students that are coming here and they can get out in seven months and they can completely change the trajectory for them, and not only them, but for generations to come. They don't have to make 15 an hour wherever. That is right. Like you've I'm sure you've seen the money that skilled trade people make. I mean, if you're willing to work, I mean if you're a welder and you're willing to travel, you can make six figures easily. So I mean that's the benefit of it. And so, and my people, a lot of them, have been here a long time and they've seen those stories where you know a kid was homeless and came to school and they were homeless, they were living in a tent, but they finish and then they come back a year later and they get I guess they call them these big dually trucks Like that's a big thing, a dually truck. It's like I don't know, it's like a big truck, it's all souped up. 

21:47 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
It's all souped up, it's all got all kinds of stuff, but they'll come driving up in there and they'll, you know, or they'll, public school space. I imagine that if we were to think like that as educators in all of the education spaces right, like in a sense, like I'm getting paid as a teacher because I have a student in my classroom who needs my help, right, I mean you could do a little workaround, logically, but that I love that, right, we are here to make that kid's dreams come true. We're here to have that student be successful, be on the trajectory for life that they want to be a community member, to figure out, like, exactly what they want to do. I just love the idea that that we are here for them and I, I think the the you know like socialist in me or whatever it's like oh, it's so sad that it's like takes capitalism to like, you know, make us think that way, but it totally does, because we live in in a capitalist system, right, that it is. It is like this is where my money or my paycheck is coming from. Is these students like? 

22:46
Of course, I want to support them as best we can and I hope that educators in public spaces can also take that nugget and and live that out, because that is uh so inspiring to, to be able to say, like you know I'm here for you guys. Like what, what do you need? Um, and and I think there's, there's probably a lot of um you know ways that you can build systems and and larger systems, like around some of the things you're talking about, and having students have agency and direction in all of their educational kind of journeys. I'm curious to know what's like one thing that you would recommend an audience member who's engaging with this episode to like do once they're done with the episode, that might be able to give them just a little bit, you know, more student agency or kind of the some of the things that we've kind of talked about in the episode today, like what's, what's one action they could take to kind of get them started on that path of like the larger transformation that we've we've talked about. 

23:45 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
Sure, and I would think, like your listeners are mostly teachers, right? 

23:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, I would say teachers and leaders of schools. 

23:53 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
I would immediately look at what you're offering and saying. Is this meeting every individual's needs or is this just based on a group? Right, and so that's like that's another piece of what we do. They're in the lab a lot. We work with them. So, like say, you're learning TIG welding, right, and, by the way, I'm a horrible welder. I've gone out because I think it's important for people to see me do it and we all laugh about it, and everyone laughed at me because that's why I'm an administration, because I can't weld. But it was a great one and it's a lot harder than it looks. I will tell you that. So, but let's just say you know you're doing a phase on TIG welding. You've got 20 kids. We do 20 to one, no more than that on the lab floor, because that's the right amount for an instructor. And the instructor goes from booth to each kid has his own booth and they're working at their own pace and the instructor is dropping in and helping the student at their own pace, right? 

24:46
The outcome is they have to be able to do it, but 20 kids on the floor doing it all in very different ways. The instructor will show them the demo. They all get together. It says, hey, here's how you do it, then go do it. But then each kid's going to do it and have challenges with doing it, and that's where the instructor's working one-on-one with them. Right, and every kid's going to have a different way that the instructor's going to have to talk to them. 

25:08
I mean, we've got fantastic instructors because they understand that, right, like, not every kid's going to learn the same. Some it's a visual thing, Some it's, you know, showing them again something you may have to show them five times, whatever it happens to be. You may have to stand there right up with them as they're doing whatever that happens to be right. So, but if you're trying to learn TIG welding, the outcome at the end you have to be able to do it. Like you're going to be measured. 

25:33
The assessment is you have to do it, and then in welding, it's basically like you look at the weld and you mark the errors, the imperfections, so, which is kind of cool, right, right, so all the kids have to have, like they have to graduate with a big. But the point is, is that everyone's going to be at a different level and sometimes we get super advanced students that come in there and they knock it out right away. They've been, you know, they've been working on their farm equipment or whatever it happens to be. We take those kids and we pair them up with the other kids that aren't doing well and say well, you know you've got to be here. So, like, why don't you get some leadership while you're here? So I think that's a good example of how putting something into practice. 

26:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I think about the pedagogy of kind of coach, coaching almost right when it's like here's the model we all have to get to the same outcome. You're all going to tackle different ways and then I am responsive to you in the room like who needs what. I think that's like ultimately great pedagogy. I wish it was more classroom spaces were like that. That's incredible and that they get to apply it right away, right like I'm going to watch the model and now I'm going to do the thing. 

26:37 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
And in all honesty, to be fair, I mean skilled trades. The physicality of it requires that. 

26:42 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Just to kind of wrap us up. I like to ask this question just for fun. It could be related to our conversation and kind of professional space, or it could just be personal, something unrelated to what we've talked about. What is something that you have been learning about lately? Ai? 

26:57 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
I am fascinated by AI. I haven't learned enough. Right, ai is not going to replace skill trades, but it's going to replace a lot of things. Right, but I think it's going to make us better. But I think all of us have a responsibility. You know, I wish I had seen I'm 62, so I've been around for a while. I wish I had seen how big the internet was going to be, back when it was starting. I would have done a lot more investigating, right, I understand where AI is going. I literally Lindsay in my LinkedIn box. You know we can save articles. I have 30 articles saved so that I can read them whenever I have time. I just find AI fascinating and I think, you know, it's kind of like a Charles Dickens thing. Right, it's the best of times. It was the worst of times because it could be not good, but I think what it could do that's good really excites me. 

27:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's interesting. Yeah, I need to learn more as well. That is, that is definitely going to be something that, like you said, the internet. We look back on and be like, oh wow, that's where it went, right. 

27:59 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
I totally missed it. I was like, oh, that's no big deal. 

28:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I think you're not alone. And then, finally, where can listeners learn more about you, learn more about your organization, connect with you online? What are those spaces? 

28:17 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
Sure, sure. So our our corporate website. So we are Stratitech Education Group. Our brands are Tulsa Welding School and the Refrigeration School. So if you wanted to go to a brand site and learn about Tulsa Welding School, it's twsedu, I believe, and just look up Tulsa Welding School and rsiedu for the refrigeration school. Stratatech is Stratatech, s-t-r-a-t-a-t-e-c-h, stratatechcom. That's our website. So and I'm available, I'd love to talk to people. Mary Kelly, k-e-l-l-y no E, please. That was a big thing in Ireland. They will fight over that. So, mary, please. That was a big thing in Ireland. That that that they will fight over that. 

28:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
So, mary, Kelly dot at stratatechcom. So awesome, Mary. Thank you so much for this conversation. Oh, I had a ball, lindsay. 

29:05 - Mary Kelly (Guest)
It was a lot of fun and thank you for doing what you're doing. You're having very important conversations and I'm just going to say one last thing. Thank you to all your listeners, because teaching is a noble profession. You don't make enough money. That needs to change. There's so many unfair things about it. But if you heard my story, you can make the difference in a life. Don't forget that on a bad day, remember you're making a difference and God bless you for doing what you're doing. Thank you for that. That was a wonderful way to end.