Ponca City High School teacher, Heather Monks, was recently recognized as the 2024 Oklahoma ACTE Carl Perkins Community Service Teacher Award winner. The Carl Perkins Community Service Award honors those who have made significant contributions toward training, motivating, and inspiring their peers and students to become involved in community service.
Ms. Monks was the Business, Marketing, and Information Technology Education recipient of the award and was then announced as
the overall winner for the state of Oklahoma. She will now be recognized and compete against other state winners at the Association for Career and Technical Education Region 4 conference in the spring.
The award was presented at the 57th Annual Oklahoma Summit, the annual conference for Career Tech professionals from across the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma Summit brings together over 4,000 Oklahoma educational professionals for one of the largest and most comprehensive networking events in the state.
Heather has been a Marketing Education teacher and DECA advisor since 2000. She has spent her entire career at Ponca City High School. She has six daughters, four of whom completed the Marketing program under Heather, and two are coming to the program soon. She works alongside her husband Alan who teaches Computer Applications. Ms. Monks enjoys serving as a Special Olympics coach, PTA member, homeroom mom, school volunteer, and numerous community service activities with her students in and out of her classroom. Building relationships is her strongest quality.
These relationships are both inside her classroom with her students as well as with community members who support her program.