For the past 10 years, Michelle Cruce-Malone has doubled as an art teacher and varsity cheerleading coach. Her dedication to her job has helped develop the cheer and art programs into ones that have received state-level recognition multiple times.

Before pursuing a career in teaching, Cruce-Malone was set to be a missionary and worked in children’s ministry at church for a short time.

“I 100% did not go to college to be a teacher,” Cruce-Malone said. “I said that’s the last thing I’m ever going to do!”

Though she didn’t continue the path of mission work in a typical sense, she found that being a high school teacher was just as great of an opportunity for ministry. Through teaching, Cruce-Malone has made it her goal to not only inspire her students through art and help them grow into better artists, but also to help her students grow into young men and women that have the tools to be successful in all areas of their lives, not just in art.

“By ministry, I mean that it’s an opportunity for me to teach skills to students and also have a positive impact on their lives,” Cruce-Malone said. “[I want to] show them what it looks like to be a member of society that contributes.”

Though she has shared her fair share of struggles and trials as a teacher and coach, she believes that there is no other profession that she could’ve pursued that would’ve fulfilled her more.

Through the hardships that her job has brought her, Cruce-Malone still seeks to help her students grow as people, just as they have helped her grow in countless different ways over her years at Melissa.