My name is Marlene Mendiola Aranda-Villarreal also known as Ms. A in campus and with my students since my last name is quite long! I am a Filipino American born in the Philippines on October 6th. I have been a Special Education teacher for 23 years in the US. Before the US, I have worked in a bank as a Personnel Officer doing staff training, then I became a refugee (Vietnamese, Laotian,Khmer and Cambodian) trainor in the Philippines with ICMC (International Catholic Migration Commission)under the office of the US State Department. When the camp closed in 1993, I taught Math and Reading in Elementary private school in the Philippines before I came to the US in 1996. My first teaching assignment in the US was at Donna High School, Donna Texas as a Pre-Algebra, Math, and English Resource teacher. Then the followng year, I moved to Brownsville, Texas where I taught Special Education for 19 years both in middle school and elementary school where I taught Resource all subjects, Content Mastery, Inclusion all subjects and Behavior Intervention unit. My most challenging field and my passion is teaching in a behavior intervention unit class. To date, I have worked the longest in this unit ( a total of 15 years). My certifications include: Special Education EC-12th and General Education EC-4th. I am also CPI (Crisis Prevention Intervention) certified, a requirement  for my job in order to keep our students and their classmates safe during crisis.   In my line of work, patience is really a virtue. I love working with all children from all grade levels, but I love working with the Elementary students the most because I am able to mold them to become better members of our society. We do a lot of Social skills lessons in our class hoping to instill in our youth the value of these skills and apply them in everyday life situation. I like to think that I make a big difference in my students' lives, but this is only possible with parents help.