Welcome Back, Jonelle Grossman ’19!

Greenwood is thrilled to welcome back Jonelle Grossman ’19 for a teaching placement this term! 

Jonelle, who first joined the Greenwood community as a Grade 9 student, returned this October to familiar hallways — this time on the other side of the desk, supporting Ms. Stent’s Grade 9 Science and Grade 11 and Grade 12 Biology classes as well as Ms. Crump’s Grade 8 Science class.

We caught up with Jonelle to chat about her return to Greenwood, her journey into education and a favourite memory from her time as a student.

“Leaving Greenwood, teaching was always in the back of my mind, though I didn’t know for sure right away,” Jonelle said. Through her own education journey, Jonelle says she realized just how uniquely supportive Greenwood’s learning environment is.

“It’s something that’s hard to find elsewhere, and I’ve really missed that feeling,” she said. 

Jonelle completed her undergraduate degree at Queen’s University and is now an intermediate/senior teacher candidate in General Science and Biology at Niagara University. Jonelle always loved working with young people, including during her time at Camp Manitou where she served as the Counsellor-In-Training Coordinator in 2024, giving feedback and mentoring youth. Ultimately, she says, the strong community and the incredible teachers she had here at Greenwood shaped her vision of becoming an educator.

Choosing Greenwood for a placement was an absolute no-brainer, Jonelle says. She’s eager to experience the teacher-side of the school—as an educator rather than a student while also learning from the staff and developing her own teaching skills along the way. She hopes having a placement here will also give her back the sense of deep connection and the tight-knit community feel she had while attending as a student.

“At the beginning of Grade 12, I took my first Grade 12 Biology quiz. I didn’t do terribly, but it definitely didn’t meet my personal standards. After class, my teacher pulled me aside. She told me she knew that result wasn’t where I wanted to be. Now, although the teacher had not taught me since Grade 9, it sticks with me that she recognized I wasn’t happy with my results and offered to help get me to where I wanted to be. In that moment, I felt truly seen as a student.”

Looking ahead to her future career, Jonelle hopes to pay that feeling forward. Her goal as an educator is to foster the same warm atmosphere in her own classroom, passing along that "unexplainable Greenwood feeling" to the next generation of students.

Welcome back, Jonelle—we’re so glad to have you back in the building!