Jon Lyons and Steve Carr

Michelle Capriotti, a special education teacher at Camille Casteel High School, has been named the Sun Lakes Rotary Sandy Lundberg Educator of the Year.

The annual award, co-sponsored by Intel, is named in memory of Lundberg who was the school’s inaugural principal. She passed away in 2018.

Alicia Cox, who teaches sports medicine through Casteel’s Career and Technical Education program, and Cheryl Butler, English Language Learning Coordinator at Hartford Sylvia Encinas Elementary School in Chandler, were finalists for the award.

“Because of the quality of the candidates for this award, the decision is never easy, but the committee does a wonderful job reviewing the applications to select the honoree,” said Grace Wilson-Woods, chair of the Sandy Lundberg Educator of the Year Award Committee. “We know that the commitment, dedication, and expertise these teachers bring to the classroom means the students in the Chandler Unified School District are certainly the biggest winners.”

Capriotti, who lives in Gilbert, currently serves on the Maricopa County Teacher Advisory Team, the Arizona State Special Education Advisory Team, and is vice president with the Chandler Education Association.

She is the 2020 National Education Association Foundation Arizona Teacher for Global Learning and a 2020 National Education Teacher Leadership Fellow. In addition to her responsibilities in the classroom, she also serves as Casteel’s Special Olympics cheer coach and is a children’s performance choreographer at the Queen Creek Performing Arts Center.

Capriotti is on track to earn a Master’s in Educational Policy from Arizona State University, where she earned a Master’s in Elementary Education. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., and a Post-Baccalaureate in Special Education from Pima Community College.

Currently, Sun Lakes Rotary holds weekly Tuesday meetings for its more than 80 members through Zoom, alternating between morning (7 a.m.) and evening (5 p.m.).

For more information about Sun Lakes Rotary, visit www.sunlakesrotary.com or www.facebook.com/groups/SunLakesRotaryClub on Facebook.