Teacher Dana Melone won the Social Studies Teacher of the Year award from the Iowa Council for the Social Studies. She will will be presented with the award at a luncheon in October and will featured in the organization’s newsletter along with presenting at the ICSS conference.

“I woke up to an e-mail and about had a heart attack when I found out I had won the award,” Melone said.

Melone currently teaches AP psychology and next year will be add AP Research and Social psychology to her daily schedule.

“Getting into high school teaching was a happy accident for me. I started out as a kindergarten teacher knowing I didn’t want to teach high school, but ended up not liking kindergarten either. I was then placed in high school teaching and I loved it,” Melone said.

Since the word got out that Melone won the award, she has been contacted by many people.

“Students that I taught my first year that are now psychology teachers themselves have contacted me and told me how I impacted them, it’s all very humbling,” Melone said.