New teacher Ms. Casano’s warm smile has been a welcome addition to the A wing this year. She often makes conversation with her students in passing, and she is just as committed to them as she seems. She emphasized her goal of being the role model she never had.

“My high school experience was lacking the support I needed,” said Casano. “I was lacking someone to give me some sort of direction, give me a boost of confidence that I could do something.”

When Mr. Allen, the head of the history department, hired Casano, he had full faith in her.

“Ms. Casano has a very positive attitude and energy that will fit nicely into our department. Her enthusiasm to be part of and grow the LHS community is something that will help the department continue to develop and move forward,” Allen commented.

Sure enough, she has filled Lane’s shoes admirably, creating a classroom environment that her students always look forward to.

“She’s not the type of teacher that would just say something and not explain it . . . She makes an effort to know everybody, which is cool. She’s one of those teachers where if I see her in the hallway, I could just have a full-on conversation with her,” said sophomore Daleena Bedoya.

Casano herself is working to get to know her students as well.

“I’m just trying to take it one day at a time and get to know the kids first before we jump into the hard, rigorous things. I’m really just learning to see the kids as humans and individuals and taking the work from there,” she said.

Casano is just as passionate about history as she is about education. Growing up, Casano was fascinated by historical fiction novels and documentaries. Her go-tos are Ruta Sepetys’ Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea, and Gilded Age on HBO. 

“I really got into Russian history,” she said. “That’s what I nerd out about.” 

In college, Casano majored in bio before realizing she missed studying history and returning to her favorite subject.

Now that Casano is a teacher, she takes inspiration from her AP Biology teacher, the closest she had to the figure she tries to be.

“She was just very human with me and I hadn’t really seen that before in a teacher. She set the standard, obviously, since it was an AP class, so she had her expectations, and we would just have to rise to them. She was also really compassionate and kind, especially when a kid like me was going through a tough time. She was really considerate of that and offered support. In my high school, not a lot of teachers did that,” Casano reminisced.

Originally from Massachusetts, Casano came to Lincoln High School for her third year of teaching. So far, she has noticed the manners and friendliness of her Rhode Island students, which make it easy to build those relationships. The same goes for getting to know other teachers:

“I’ve been really fortunate to meet really supportive, kind people” she said.“Teacher-wise, I would say the entire history department is super welcoming. The entirety of A-wing, which is where I am, is incredibly welcoming, and Mr. Hopkins is a fantastic principal. He’s so kind and he’s so warm and your superintendent is also really nice . . . it’s been really easy to make friends.”

Casano is a traveling teacher who does not have her own classroom, and she finds this difficult, as any teacher would. Her greatest challenge is making sure her classrooms are welcoming to students, but Bedoya put that anxiety to rest.

“I feel very welcome and comfortable in her class. As soon as I walked in and met her for the first time, I just felt comfortable,” Bedoya said.

Casano’s top tips as a traveling teacher are keeping a binder of missed work for absent students, carrying a bag instead of a cart, and having a digital copy of everything. She describes traveling as “totally doable, just inconvenient.”

Casano is also taking over LHS’s Club for Change, formerly run by Lane. Casano wanted to get more involved in the school community now that her first years of teaching are behind her. When she was invited by senior Lila Swartz, she saw it as a great opportunity to help students do meaningful volunteering in their community. Despite only knowing Ms. Casano through her joint advisory with Ms. Michels, Swartz attests, “she is a great fit for Club for Change!” Meetings are every other Friday in A104.

Casano emphasized, “Something everyone at LHS should know about me is that I’m here for the kids first. Anything I do, whether it’s lesson planning, reaching out to parents, going to games, I do that because I have intentions of benefiting my kids.”

Later, Casano admitted her true top priority is her cat, Nigel. “Forget me, it’s about the cat,” she said, on record.