Huebner Elementary School fourth grade teacher Diana Villanueva had no intentions of teaching.
She was planning to become a lawyer.
But she worked as a substitute teacher on the way to her dream job and her path was altered forever.
“I got hooked after a few days of teaching. I loved the way it felt when a student got something that moment. In my class, we call it like our mind-blown moment. But I had a student who learned something while I was subbing. He got it and he goes, ‘You should be a teacher.’ I went to change my degree plan that day.”
Villanueva has been blowing kids minds ever since.
She’s taught for 16 years now -- the past four have been at Huebner.
She’s living the dream she didn’t know she had.
“Every single day I go home and my heart’s full. Because every day something happens where it reignites that reason why you're here and you're here for the kids. And every single day I can go home, and I'm so tired, but I know that I changed a life today.”
In her classroom, students are engaged.
They are excited about learning math.
She explains why an Xbox 360 has a circle logo – starting with a 90 degree angle and adding three more to get to 360 degrees. The wave of understanding washes over the room as students begin adding angles and reach their mind-blown moments.
She's helping students realize math is all around them, and they know more than they think they know.
“It’s really nice to connect everything to real life. I always have a little trick up my sleeve or something to make it fun, engaging and connecting to their actual real life and things that they don't even know that they know. So, it's really cool. It's really cool to watch that.”
It’s those connections, that will help her students thrive as grow on their learning journey. Math is made fun and learning becomes a lasting lesson.
Villanueva is just one of our incredibly loving and engaging teachers who make lasting impressions and impacts on our students every day.
