A core part of teaching is making sure every student feels safe and supported in their classroom.

Dr. Ron Canos has been teaching for over two decades now at the home of the sharks and Canos, who is a national board certified teacher in visual arts recently was the recipient of the diversity, equity, and inclusion in teaching grant by National Society of High School (NSHSS).

This grant recognizes educators who actively promote effective diversity and inclusion initiatives in their school or greater community.

Dr. Canos shared, “I think it's always important to have diversity, equity, and inclusion at the forefront of education because we all know that education itself is very diverse and people learn in very different ways. We have to be able to open up our teaching and instruction to the myriad of ways that students can learn.”

In doing that, Canos says you're giving greater opportunities for students.

Upon hearing he was one of five educators awarded the grant, he was filled with excitement and started to brainstorm how to use the grant.

“How are we celebrating diversity? How are we celebrating equity and inclusion of our student body? So we are trying to move outside of in-class and look at how do we celebrate our role models? Our student role models? Groups that are achieving at a higher level by being diverse and being themselves and expressing themselves in those ways,” He said.

One of the first things he did with the grant was support the lady sharks who won the championship for volleyball.

Canos shared, “We looked at that particular team and we just looked at the diversity of the players- we were just so happy to see everybody there from different walks of life, different cultural backgrounds, different individual perspectives and they were all working together and uniting as one accomplishing a goal and we thought that is a great thing to celebrate.”

He also uses some of the funds to help out the Yigo community. However, Canos says it's one grant of many out there for educators.

“I’m not doing anything special that other teachers aren't doing out there. We are all looking for that extra little penny we can put into our classrooms. When I go looking for grants, I'm always looking for how am I going to be able to get some supplemental funds to to keep my kids engaged, get them involved, buy equipment, inventory...things like that- materials, resources,” He said.

If there is any message he could get out to his fellow educators to help encourage them, “this is a really challenging landscape we are working in right now in education, I think a big kudos goes out to the teachers who are in the trenches, we're working hard to navigate these challenges.”

He went on to say, “We have to lean on our talents as teachers and educators but more importantly we should never forget it's always about the students.”