Roanoke Minnick assistant teacher making impact at school she once attended

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) - “I went from foster home to foster home, group home to group home, residential home to residential home; I was completely out of control.”

Quanesha Moyer has come a long way since she was a kid.

“I was supposed to be confined to detention until I was 21. They were like, your life is hopeless, girl I don’t know what to tell you.”

A Roanoke Minnick teacher knew Moyer was capable of turning her life around, encouraging her to apply to work there.

“I remember when Mr. Nash asked me like, why is this a good fit for you? And I was like, because I was one of these kids at one point and I could see myself in each one of them.”

Now Moyer, or “Miss Q” as her students call her, is an assistant teacher at Roanoke Minnick and understands the importance of connecting with the students.

“I think it’s important that we’re those role models for them. They can look at me and they say, Hey, Ms. Q was a Minnick student, now she’s a teacher, then I can be a Minnick student and be a teacher, I can be an athlete or a doctor or lawyer or I can be whatever I want to be

Roanoke Minnick administration sees first-hand the impact Miss Q has.

“We know that the success of our students really is rooted in the quality of our relationships with them. They can feel it from her. They feel it from her soul, they feel it from her actions, they feel it from her words, and she is here making a difference,” said Ashley Wittl-Osborne, director of Educational Services.

It’s not just the administration that sees it; it’s parents as well.

“Kids need to learn all types of things, not just schoolwork, they need to learn everyday life. She’s given them that extra little bit, that teaches them what they need to know, skills so that when they go out of school into the real world, they’ll know how to act or how to cooperate with other people,” said Melissa Graybill, whose daughter is in Miss Q’s class.

Miss Q is proud of how far she’s come and has a message to those who might be in the same shoes she was.

“I really live kind of like by the one-day principle. If you live by that one day, then you’ll eventually build that hope and then that hope will eventually turn into a future.”

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