Few have been as supportive of students at Sierra High School as Jeff Greene. He has taught English I through III, Communication by Design, and Get Focused Stay Focused (GFSF) since arriving at the Thomas Street campus more than a decade ago. However, this year Mr. Greene decided to step away from his English classes to work with the freshmen and sophomores, helping them become confident and strong leaders for the future. He goes beyond the call of duty as a teacher by giving up his personal time and listening to concerns students may have. In return, he offers a truthful response. With a playful and compassionate teaching style, he knows how to make his students comfortable enough to want to open up. On a campus full of professional teachers, he might be Sierra’s most supportive. I sat down with Mr. Greene to discuss his role as a teacher, track coach and family man. 

Q: You told me once you “accidentally” became a teacher. How did that happen?

A: I fell into English as a whole major accidentally, because I kind of bounced around a lot and I kept taking different classes trying to figure out what my major was going to be in college. Then I was taking a look at my transcript and realized, “Oh look I have a lot of same types of classes together that are the same English courses.” Just to make college easier I decided that’s the way I’ll go; stick to what I’ve been doing, and it’ll work out for me. Once I graduated, I was like, “What do I do with an English degree? Well, let me go teach some people.”

Q: What did you want to be before becoming a teacher? 

A:  I went through different phases through high school and college. For a while I wanted to be a firefighter. I wanted to get into business economics and then I couldn’t do math, so I stopped doing those classes. I wanted to be a phycologist, (but) then as I took phycology classes and found that everyone in those classes were crazy. … Eventually, I started falling into those English classes.

Q: How is it to coach track?

A: I love coaching track. Track is a lot of fun because there so many different things that athletes can be a part of. … There’s so many different events and so many different ways you can use an athlete tracks always exciting you can move stuff around and it’s a fun sport to coach’ 

Q: How did you become qualified to teach English, Communication by Design and GFSF? 

A: I mean I went to college for an English degree … outside of that it started just becoming “What are things that I would like to teach? What are things I want to be involved in? What are the things that keep me engaged with doing stuff on a day to day bases in class, because English class gets boring sometimes?” So, you try to find ways to break it up.

I got into the Communication by Design class through some work I completed during my master’s program, teaching at Stanislaus State. That qualified me for it, but even then, I was always on the outside of always knowing what I was doing and kind of faking my way through it. As for GFSF,  I (went through) a lot of different training and worked with Mrs. Fast (former GFSF instructor) on how to implement it. When she ended up leaving, I kind of volunteered to take it over and said, “Look I know all these different steps and how it works. Give me a shot.”

Q: What are some of your hobbies? 

A: Since having a kid, hanging out with him has become a hobby.

Q: How are you and your family dealing with quarantine? 

A: We’re hanging in there. You know, I get to leave the house and get to come to work and things like that, so I’m doing OK. My wife works at home, she’s going a little crazy and can’t wait to get out. … But were making the most of it . You can only control so many things and were just trying to do our best.

Q: What advice do you have for student who also want to become a teacher?

A: Know what you’re getting into in the sense that there a lot of different parts to it. When I think of being a teacher, I think about standing in front of the class having discussions, interacting with students and things like that which is 70 percent of the job. But there are a lot of little things that come up. It’s not always “stand here and share your knowledge and wisdom” and all things like that.

Q: What are your favorite family vacation spots and why? 

A: I’ve gone to Hawaii twice with my wife and we had a great time with that. We were going to go last summer but had to cancel. We do a lot of trips to San Diego, because we enjoy going to the beach. We enjoy the weather there. We have family and things there, so it’s nice to connect.”

Q: Do you have a bucket list to fulfill?

A: I don’t and the only reason I don’t is because I kind of subscribed to the idea of if you want to do something go do.