Christina Andrade Melly teaches English at Ritenour High School in St. Louis, Missouri. A graduate of the Ritenour School District, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English and Bachelor of Science in secondary education at the University of Missouri-Columbia before returning to teach at her alma mater.

She believes in the power of connection to uplift our schools and communities. To that end, Andrade Melly serves as a mentor in the district teacher induction and Grow Your Own programs, coach emeritus of the speech and debate team, English department chair and Ritenour National Education Association (NEA) president. Within the union, she chairs the Missouri NEA Resolutions Committee and was recently elected to a fourth term as a delegate on the National Resolutions Committee. Andrade Melly continued her learning with a Master of Arts in English and a graduate certificate in the teaching of writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, becoming a Gateway Writing Program teacher-consultant along the way.

She is a first-generation American and uses writing to amplify her students’ voices, including publishing their experiences with writing through the National Council of Teachers of English’s English Journal. She lives in University City, Missouri, with her husband Matthew and two children, who are incredibly tolerant of her many school projects, and are wonderful companions on the journey. In the words of Maya Angelou, Andrade Melly “would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”