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Faculty Spotlight: Mr. Kelvin Martinez

AO: Who is Kelvin Martinez?

KM: Kelvin Martinez is a father of three, husband, soccer coach, Spanish teacher, Dean of Multicultural Affairs, a drummer, and a native of Honduras from the Garifuna tribe.

I love learning languages. I speak four languages right now and am trying to decide which will be my fifth – it’s between French and Italian.  Learning a new language helps me get a sense of what my students are going through. 

I also love hiking with my kids. They’re very adventurous and enjoy being in the woods. I love doing that with them on the weekends that I’m home. And I love playing the drums with them. I’m musically inclined. I like jazz in particular as well as salsa and reggae.  I love punta too – it’s the music of my tribe and has a lot of West African rhythms.

 

AO: How did you come to be in the United States?

KM: I first came to the United States as a student at Northfield Mount Hermon School after receiving a scholarship from the government of Honduras. Several thousand students applied and three were selected. At that time, I had no idea what a boarding school was, and when I arrived I realized it was so much more than I could have even imagined, particularly compared to my educational system at home where there just aren’t the resources or infrastructure devoted to education like in the States. Also, at that time there had never been a Garifuna from my town who had received an education that went beyond the fifth grade.  The rest is pretty much history.  Most of my family stayed there, though some others of my generation have settled in New York, Miami and Houston.  Their paths have not been easy though.  I am very grateful for my own path.

 

AO: How did you land at Northwood School?

KM: I was in Boston at another boarding school and had heard about this opportunity as Dean of Multicultural Affairs and prep soccer coach. It seemed like a good opportunity —and a good challenge — so I left Boston to come to Lake Placid.

 

AO: Having been here nearly a year now, what do you think about Lake Placid and Northwood?

KM: I love Northwood School. The people here are amazing. Northwood School is a place where my family has come to call home.  And I’m surprised about that because it’s so cold here! Initially we said let’s give it a try, but it might just be a one year shot. Turns out the consensus in our house is that this a very beautiful, unique, and close-knit place that has welcomed my family — and we feel at home.

 

AO: You’re a native speaker of Spanish. What’s it like to teach Spanish to students as a second language?

KM: It’s a process that I enjoy. It takes a lot of empathy. When I came to this country, I didn’t speak any English and all of my classes were in English.  To go from that to ‘I can kind of read this, then I can kind of speak this, then I can kind of write this’ and then the lightbulbs begin to go off. So now when I see my students read something and recognize a verb form we learned in class and get excited about it, I feel that.  It’s rewarding when students grasp it, and I have tremendous empathy for the process.

 

AO: Can you tell me more about Black Rock Football Club Residential Academy at Northwood School?

KM: This is a new model in the Northeast — to have a soccer program within the context of a boarding school that trains and plays games all year.  We break our season down into two different seasons: fall and then winter/spring.  In the fall we play against the best prep schools, other boarding schools that we wouldn’t otherwise play. And then in winter/spring, we play the top academy teams in the country.   These are professional teams that have youth academies such as Philadelphia Union, New York Red Bulls, and New York FC.  The program is intended to expose our players to as many college coaches as possible, which is why we attend showcases like the one in Las Vegas and the Dallas Cup where there are over 200 college coaches.  We just returned from Las Vegas where two of our players were offered D1 college scholarships. 

It was also our goal to create a very multicultural and therefore diverse team. Our players represent 19 countries and that’s something that we want to continue to do — to bring talented players from all over the world to Northwood. In the fall we were ranked 2nd in the country out of all prep schools. That was a great achievement for a first-year program.

 

AO: Let’s talk about the addition of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Northwood.

KM: It didn’t exist at Northwood prior to this year, it’s a path that has not been traveled. It fits nicely with my role with the soccer program and the recruiting that I do with the admissions office on working with students from diverse backgrounds.  I think that the biggest thing my office strives to increase diversity at Northwood and also to make sure that it works. Part of that is making sure that students feel like this is home. I think it’s been successful so far because we have a community that is very accepting and welcoming of the increasing diversity on our campus. It truly takes the whole community to make it work. I think it shows how much the faculty and staff care about our students and this place.

Moving forward we are hoping to grow the number of student affinity groups we have on campus. This year we had a fully functional Black Student Union which was very critical for the students that were a part of it. Historically, affinity groups offer a platform for voices often relegated to the margins. Therefore, having a place where they can simply be and express themselves was an important step. Our office also works to build an active partnership with other independent schools, as well as the different departments at Northwood in an effort to enhance an inclusive, outreaching, and growing multicultural community.