Melissa Wells

K-12 Representative

2021

Elizabeth Public Schools
Twitter:  @SignoraWells   
E-mail: BaciMelissa@gmail.com

Biography:

Melissa Wells is a teacher of Italian in Elizabeth Public Schools in New Jersey where she has contributed to the school communities and curriculum writing teams since 2009.   Ms. Wells teaches Italian courses from levels 1 through AP and has also offered adaptive Italian courses for our special needs language learners.   She has a bachelors in Italian Studies and Psychology from Rutgers University as well as an MAT in Italian.  During her time at Rutgers University, she was inducted into the Phi Sigma Iota National Honor Society for Italian. She also has a Master’s degree in Food Science and Nutrition from Montclair State University and a certification of Educational Leadership in Supervision from New Jersey City University.   

Ms. Wells has been providing professional development throughout her district of 3000 educators since 2012 with respect to both educational technology integration as well as curriculum and language learning pedagogy.  You may recognize her from AATI’s summer series Flipgrid training video.  More recently she was also a co-presenter at the 2021 NECTFL virtual conference for her pre-recorded presentation on “Redefining Digital Language Learning Techniques” which aligned language learning with the SAMR model of technology integration to serve teachers of all languages whether their instruction was remote, hybrid or face to face.    

Ms. Wells was voted her school’s teacher of the year by her administrative team and peers in 2017. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Elizabeth Education Association as well, as the Co-Chair of the Instructional Advisory Committee.  In 2019, she was a recipient of the Italian Teacher Association of New Jersey’s Borsa di Studio in which she was granted the opportunity to study in Taormina.  She is a member of ITANJ, AATI and the Italian Language Foundation (ILF) as well as an active Coccia Student Alumna.