With her eighteen years at EHS Greta Von Bernuth has made an impact on the Spanish department and National Honors Society, but it’s been a long road to get to this point. 

Von originally went to college for business and had a business major with a Spanish minor from CSU. 

“I worked in business for a few years and realized that I was not suited to it at all,” explains Von. After that realization, she went back to college to pursue a degree in English with hopes of becoming an English teacher, when then, her son was born.

“All my mother genes kicked in and I didn’t want to go leave my baby somewhere. So I did a lot of random weird jobs that I did in off hours,” adds Von. After realizing that Von needed to find a more flexible job that allowed her the time to take care of her children, she opened a gift shop with her mother. This job provided her with the flexibility for her mother to help her take care of her kids while also working. However by the time Von’s youngest was in preschool she decided she was ready to pursue teaching again.

“I decided that I really needed to do something different. The hours weren’t great with the gift shop and lots of stuff. So I thought, well sub,” Von adds.

“If you think about it, being a substitute is a thankless job,” explains Von, “kids are horrible to substitute teachers. It’s a rule, it’s just what is. But I loved subbing. I had fun.” 

Substitute teaching wasn’t exactly what Von originally had in mind when she went back to school to teach, but it ended up being a great fit for her.

“I started subbing, and then I discovered that I really did love high school kids.” Von’s appreciation for her students shines the most with her dedication and support for them.

Sophie Fenster, NHS Co-President explains how “she’s very protective of her kids and her people, like her students are basically her kids.”

“I just think they’re funny and they crack me up and I feel like I relate to them,” Von says, which is best exemplified by her support of past students.

A couple of years ago a student of Von’s got into Harvard, “I was really worried about her. She was not from what has become like our typical really wealthy Erie family…So it was gonna be a really different environment,” commented Von. 

Von explains how she had a similar experience when she went to The University of Denver.

“I grew up in Longmont. I grew up on a farm…going to DU was such a huge culture shock for me because it was with all these people who were really, not all of them, but a lot of people who were really, really rich…and so it was just so good to be able to understand what she was saying.”

One day, this student had come back to visit Von to talk about her college, “it was so hard…because she had a really good scholarship and she goes, they gave me some money for a winter coat and I just went out and bought an LL Bean winter coat and I thought that’d be fine for Boston. And then there were all these people that showed up in whatever was the expensive name brand cool coat. And she’s like, I was such a dork because I was the only one wearing an LL bean Peacoat.” 

Von adds, “then I kind of lost touch with her until literally just a couple days ago…I was worried about maybe did she not finish, did she like dropout of college or did she come back here and not stay at Harvard and not end up with her Harvard degree?” Then Von explained how she was scrolling through Facebook and saw that her student had got her degree and graduated from Harvard. 

Von still has this understanding relationship with her current students today. 

“She’s very down to earth and she knows how to level with me as a student and she makes me feel very heard when some teachers don’t,” explains NHS Co-President Emma Jackson.

Von had a similar connection with another student of hers who “was on track to just sail through and clean up in high school and then he had some weird stomach ailment…he just finally muscled through it and it got better. But he missed so much school…he had to work to get caught up.”

After recovering from his illness this student ended up going to Harvey Mudd for engineering.

Von explained how “he was so elated to get in there and then he came back the next, at Christmas the next year and he told her, “Oh my God. I went from being a big fish in a small pond to being a minnow in a huge pond. And he goes, I had to work so hard, I’ve never worked that hard in my life.” However, according to Von, this student was also able to graduate college successfully. 

Part of what makes Von able to connect with her students is her love for the material she teaches.

When explaining what made her decide to teach Spanish, Von explained when referring to her and her husband, “we do love to travel, but I love Hispanic culture. I love Hispanic heritage, and I am really just such a geek that I love grammar.”

Von adds, “I’m super just nerdily [and] geekly interested in the way language works and I love comparing the way language works.” 

Von approaches her class by mixing the content of learning a language itself with more fun aspects. 

“I try to do some fun things. I try to make class light in as many ways as I can and still do the hard work…and instill some love of culture as I go along. It’s kind of my goal,” details Von.

To help instill lessons about culture into the curriculum Von includes art into her lessons. “I do a whole unit around Frida Kahlo…so I love doing the research into that era, that point in time at which she did her work. I love her artwork because it’s so forceful…and her relationship with Diego Rivera. I like to talk about all of that because I think it’s so applicable still to humans,” Von explains.

In previous years culture was even more infused into the lesson plans. 

Von explains, “I used to do a big research project into Hispanic artists and their artwork and then we would do an art project and do an imitation painting…I love it. And it’s usually one that kids enjoy. I used to do a really great unit around immigration and try to help people, help kids, understand how complex it is.”

Von’s passion for what she does plays a role in everything she does, as she explains, “I care deeply about the things that I’m involved in and I don’t get involved in stuff unless I care about it.”

Another passion of Von’s is her involvement in Erie High School’s National Honors Society. National Honors Society has four pillars consisting of Scholarship, Service, Character and Leadership. Von details how all four of these aspects are essential to her own life. 

Scholarship is best exemplified with how Von raised her children, “I don’t recall, it was just that studying and being a good student was so much a part of our lives and such an emphasis that I never like micromanaged and checked their grades…They just knew that scholarship was important in our household.

Von explains how the importance of scholarship that she instilled on her kids likely came from her own upbringing, “my parents met at CSU, they both had college degrees…I have an uncle who has a PhD and he was a college professor. So all of that has always been important to my family and I just love learning.”

Von also places an emphasis on the service aspects, “we are called to help to make life better for people around us in whatever way we can and so it’s really important to me.”

The leadership aspect of NHS has played a role in Vons life more accidentally when she ended up sponsoring NHS after receiving a plea from a past secretary here at Erie High School. “She called me in and she goes, we need somebody to help with National Honor Society…so she kind of drafted me into it and I worked with these two other men teachers.”

Von explains how these two teachers that she ran it with eventually found other responsibilities or retired so Von was left to organize NHS on her own. 

The last and final pillar that Von presents in her own life is character, which is best exemplified by her relationship with NHS members. 

“She gave me a lot of opportunity when I wasn’t sure I was having any, so she gave me a lot of chances to grow and help the community…I’ve been able to do a lot of things to help the community that I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to if I didn’t have her support,” explains Fenster. 

Emma Jackson adds how “ I just feel respected when I work with her and like I can make the things I want to happen happen through her, and she’s so helpful, and she’s very funny and just a great person.”

With all that she’s involved in, and the long road that Mrs. Von has taken to get to this point, she makes an excellent addition to the community at Erie High School and is sure to continue to help the community grow in the future.