Melissa Staude

Grafton High School

This year the Teacher of the Year is Melissa Staude, at Grafton High School where she has been teaching beginning and advanced chemistry classes for four years. Prior to Grafton High School, she was teaching at Larkin High School in Elgin, IL. where she had also taught physics. Her undergraduate degree is from Wisconsin Lutheran College and her masters degree in Science Education is from National-Lewis University.

Melissa views her teaching as being a "motivator", where she uses a variety of techniques to interest her students in the subject of Chemistry. To this end she will adapt popular songs to her class and try to connect the subject matter to the interests of her students. "Getting the student involved" is one of her objectives. When I visited one of her classes, she employed all of these techniques in discussing the differences of acids and bases to her first year chemistry students. She has a rapport with her students that could be described as professional but yet she kept the class mood light with interspersed humor, always encouraging the student. At the beginning of the semester she would hold a special class on laboratory safety, performing a skit where she would dress as a Grafton Cheerleader and some of the students would be the football players. She would then proceed to "break the rules" and purposely commit a number of safety violations. The students would then have to identify the violations on a quiz.

Melissa is currently teaching half time. This enables her to spend time at home with her husband and three year old son, Luke. When she is not spending time with her family, she likes to run (Melissa has been a coach for track and cross country running.), go camping, do home remodeling with her husband where they recently remodeled the kitchen, and do photography.

The names of Melissa's students were withheld by request