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Elgin teacher Melissa Yvonne, 2025 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, credits CareerTech for career reinvention
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Summary
Melissa Yvonne of Elgin Public Schools told the Oklahoma State Board of Career and Technology Education that CareerTech helped her transition into family and consumer sciences and shaped her message as state Teacher of the Year.
Melissa Yvonne, the 2025 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year and a teacher at Elgin Public Schools, addressed the State Board of Career and Technology Education about her career path and the role CareerTech played in her professional reinvention.
Yvonne described a long teaching career that took her outside Oklahoma before returning in 2014 to teach in Elgin. After a decade teaching seventh-grade social studies she said she considered leaving education but ultimately retrained as a family and consumer sciences teacher with CareerTech support. "I decided to choose reinvention over resignation and to have my own 'get out of the boat' moment," Yvonne told the board.
She said CareerTech provided a week of training, a mentor and a program specialist during her transition. "The coolest thing about CareerTech, they said, 'you're gonna do something new ... we're gonna give you a mentor ... and those teachers were incredibly supportive,'" she said. Yvonne described teaching adulting skills, financial literacy, hospitality and basic job-readiness skills and said students frequently ask practical questions — how to fill out job applications, open a bank account or invest for college.
Yvonne said that as Teacher of the Year she remains employed by Elgin Public Schools, has a contract with the Oklahoma State Department of Education and is expected to be in the OSDE office one day a week and do at least two school or community visits a month. "My goal is 75 visits between now and next July," she said, noting pre-COVID Teachers of the Year did about 100 visits and that last year’s teacher completed 52 visits.
Board members and CareerTech staff thanked Yvonne for her advocacy and for highlighting the impact of CareerTech resources on classroom practice. Her remarks were part of a broader set of summit and program updates presented to the board; no board action was taken on her remarks.
