APS All Stars Announced for May 2024

Melanie Vu

Syphax Education Center
Proactive Helpful Organized Cheerful Calm

Melanie is an essential part of the Library Services team. She partners with every librarian, many vendors as well as Procurement and Finance to ensure students across the district receive the books and databases ordered just for them. She tracks every dollar and every shipment to confirm every book we order is received and all online resources we pay for are current.

Melanie is very focused on customer service. She communicates with librarians, vendors and finance daily so everyone knows where orders are in process. She visits schools to help with things like inventory. Melanie is also a forward thinker. She looks at processes to see how we can be more efficient and makes suggestions for support with schools in mind. Melanie does all of her work with joy and loves knowing she is impacting every learner. She is a joy!

Celine Clark

Long Branch
Approachable Friendly Reflective Collaborative Professional

Ms. Clark is the Advanced Academics Coach at Long Branch. She is approachable, friendly, and easy to work with. She meets all deadlines set by the administration and the Advanced Academics Office. She pushes into classrooms to co-teach and model lessons for students. This year, Ms. Clark stepped up into the role of also working as the Math Coach. Ms. Clark planned for and facilitated many Math CLTs for staff. Ms. Clark provides differentiated lessons tailored to Long Branch students in K – 6, in all content areas. Adding the role of a Math lens this year was a lift that she was not asked to do, but stepped up to do anyway. She is terrific at building rapport with teachers and helping them increase their efficacy in meeting students’ needs. She is a true learner. The skills she gains in her professional learning are immediately put into use. She is reflective and collaborative to levels truly worthy of an APS All Star. She is a consummate professional.

Ms. Clark works closely with the coaching team as well as classroom teachers. She works alongside classroom teachers to plan scaffolds for students who need access to enriching lessons, activities, and structures. She spends countless hours working to build teacher efficacy when it comes to teaching gifted students.

Ms. Clark runs the Math Dice Club and co-sponsors the Girls on the Run club.

Ms. Clark is one of the teacher leaders for our school as the only Advanced Academics Coach. This requires that she monitors the progress of all students who have a gifted label, assists with the placement of gifted students in classes for the upcoming year, updates data walls in a timely manner with pertinent information regarding gifted students, and runs the Gifted Screening process. Ms. Clark also represents Gifted students at IEP meetings, Student Support Team meetings, and grade-level CLT meetings.

Leasi Stroud

Langston
Committed attentive to detail and professional

In addition to fulfilling her job requirements, Leasi Stroud demonstrates a passion and excitement to reach students and encourage them academically and socially. She holds a personal and professional commitment to student achievement which is evident in many ways. Our students trust her and sense her devotion and dedication to them. They are motivated by her enthusiasm, and many rely on her to get their day started, as she is one of the first faces they see in the morning reminding them to get to class on time. She is instrumental in Langston’s charge to build support systems and eliminate barriers.

Ms. Stroud brings her law enforcement expertise and overall high ethical and moral standards of conduct to any occasion. She is a proven asset to the learning community with a positive attitude and willingness to share ideas with her colleagues, impacting the school’s success, culture, and climate. Ms. Stroud is committed and attentive to detail and exhibits keen skills desired in her role as Safety Security Coordinator (SSS). We appreciate her and are happy that she is a Langston Lion!

Jocelyn Mullins

Yorktown
Hardworking dynamic caring dedicated and enthusiastic

Mrs. Mullins is a shining star and exemplary teacher at Yorktown. She cares deeply about her students, helping them develop and refine their musical abilities. She holds students to high standards and leads with compassion as she fosters their growth and development, not just in music but as young adults. She creates opportunities for her students to lead others and encourages them to showcase their skills at a variety of venues including high school and national sporting events, community events, competitive performances, and school concerts, and she gives of her time to ensure these after-hours programs and events are well run and attended. She is also an excellent communicator and incredibly organized keeping parents and students apprised of events and schedules.

What is most impressive and significant is the strong sense of community she creates for her students within the school. She offers a safe and inclusive space for her students to collaborate, share, and support one another and she leads by example as she willingly gives her time to all around her.

Without a doubt, Mrs. Mullins is a cherished teacher by students and parents alike and is deserving of recognition for her contributions to the music department at Yorktown, her students, and APS.

Marcelo Ribera

Barcroft
Essential Link for English Learning Families

Marcelo is the conduit and barrier-reducer for hundreds of students and families at Barcroft. He does all of the prescribed functions of his role as Bilingual Liaison, and he fundamentally understands the value of family engagement and works to build community and participation for families of all cultural and linguistic backgrounds. He fully supports the academic access and communication needs of students and their families and is also a leading connector for the identification and support of families’ well-being and safety. In his time at Barcroft, he has established trust with students and families and they often confide in him when they are facing challenges beyond academics. He seamlessly connects with support personnel and programs and augments these specialists with communication support. I have had the opportunity to work closely with him since his first week at Barcroft and can honestly say that he vastly surpassed my hopes from first meeting him in a candidate interview that included three parents. He understands the vital role that he fills because he was an English learner parent of an APS student and he treats every family with the care and concern he would show his own family. He is a true APS All Star.

His role is extremely demanding and yet, I have witnessed that families feel as though he has their full attention and is entirely committed to their access and communication needs, regardless of how many staff, PTA, and additional families he’s supporting. Barcroft and APS were wise and fortuitous to take a chance on a career changer several years ago because Marcelo has done nothing but raise the bar for family access and support since he became a Bilingual Liaison. We are a healthier and stronger school community because of him.