One part of a school’s staff that always gets overlooked is the staff members dedicated to students with special needs. Here at Canyon High School, one of those staff members, Ms. Victoria Greene, gave me the chance to ask her a couple of questions about her job and why she does it.

Ms. Greene stated that her favorite part of her job is her students. “I love my kids, I don’t know if you’ve heard the saying “they fill up my bucket”, they bring me so much joy. I enjoy coming to school because I want to see my students.” 

Ms. Greene didn’t always want this career, but she always had the same caring mindset. Originally wanting to become a social worker for the elderly but switched programs because of a move. “…I started at Texas State and was in the school of social work but had to move to Corpus Christi where they did not have a social work program so I had to change up everything, where I started working with social services and with youth, then started going into schools and that’s how I decided I wanted to work with kids.” 

Connecting with students is a challenge, even for experienced teachers, for Ms. Greene it’s just important to her. “I always try to build rapport, I think that’s the most important thing”, Greene said on how she connects with her students. “So you know, finding out what interest they have and trying to incorporate those things into my lessons, some of my kids are really into Sonic, or any other things they like, I always try to use those in my lessons.”

To keep things interesting for the kids, I asked Ms. Greene how she breaks up the monotony of schooling. “We try to do different fun stuff, when we were learning about length and measurement we did like airplane throws to try and have them measure that and incorporate a hands-on activity. This week we’re going to be making hot chocolate, learning about the states of matter, so just kinda stuff that they can get their hands involved with and that kind of thing.”

Because of teachers like Ms. Greene, less fortunate students can have a safe and inviting learning environment to grow and further develop in and still look forward to coming to school, even when they may not feel like it.