On October 17th, IMPACT students received a very engaging and unique trilingual presentation from scientist and educator Carla Mello. Carla recently changed jobs from her position as a Youth Career Exploration Specialist at COSI to her current role with Ohio History Connection as manager of the Ohio as America curriculum.
Carla focused her presentation on her the trajectory of her life and career as well as transitions from her home country of Brazil, to Chile where she lived for six years, to finally the U.S. Her presentation’s visual components representing these periods were organized by the language associated with each place. Slides on Brazil had text in Portuguese (though she presented this portion in English) while those on Chile had Spanish text (which were presented in Spanish also) and those pertaining to the U.S. had English text (presented once again in English).
Carla shared about her professional experience, starting with her degrees in Biology and Education which helped her navigate through a variety of career fields, from molecular biology research to public health, before discovering her true passion for working in informal education environments, particularly museums. She answered students’ questions about the financing of her pursuits and how the process of immigration factored into all of it. She interacted with students in both Spanish and English. Our students were also very interested to hear about the 14 other countries which Carla has traveled to in her life!
IMPACT greatly appreciates Carla’s ability to get our students engaged and thinking about their futures by sharing her story with them. 