Lincoln Prep educator with LINC ties wins 2023 Regional Teacher of the Year award
Kansas City Public Schools teacher Kayla McClellan, center, poses with school board Vice Chair Jennifer Wolfsie, left, and Interim Superintendent Jennifer Collier, right, at the August 24 school board meeting. Picture from Kansas City Public Schools.
Kayla McClellan, who describes herself as “the ultimate hype woman” for her students, can now call herself a 2023 Missouri Regional Teacher of the Year.
The award places the Lincoln College Preparatory Academy Middle School teacher in the running for the Missouri State Teacher of the Year to be announced later this fall.
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The Kansas City Public Schools announced McClellan’s achievement at its August school board meeting.
McClellan was a child at LINC’s Caring Communities program at the former J.S. Chick Elementary School. Her father, Steve McClellan, is a long-time LINC Caring Communities Coordinator who now serves youths in LINC’s program that helps children who are aging out of Missouri’s foster care system prepare for independent living.
Kayla McClellan, a former Lincoln Prep student, went to Grambling State University in Louisiana, one of the nation’s premier History Black Colleges and Universities. She continued on to earn a master’s degree from Mississippi State University.
"She attended an HBCU, and she is representing them tonight,” Kansas City Public Schools Interim Superintendent Jennifer Collier said in congratulating McClellan at the school board meeting. “That’s where professors inspired her to be a teacher.”
McClellan teaches American history at Lincoln, and she also teaches the district’s AVID program — Advancement Via Individual Determination — which focuses on making students college-ready.