Ms. Manzanares is a business teacher at Rocky Mountain High School and one of the DECA and FBLA sponsors. Manzanares student taught at Rocky for one year and then came back and has been teaching at Rocky for two years.

She was born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado, and then moved to Fort Collins for college. Manzanares went to Colorado State University with many scholarships, including the Daniel’s Fund, first generation scholarships, and scholarships from softball, which ended being a full ride. She majored in history and minored in business.

Softball and baseball are very special to Ms. Manzanares. She played softball all through high school and college, “Softball taught me a lot of life lessons and I ended up gaining many friends that I now consider to be family,” she said. She is now a coach for the Boy’s Baseball C team.

Growing up, Manzanares was inspired to be a teacher by her own teachers. “I had a really good social studies teacher freshman year of high school, and I always knew that I wanted to work with kids and help them go through this phase of their life in high school. This is a time where high school students start to make a lot of decisions and go through bumps in the road and I see that they will need guidance and support and I just wanted to give back,” she explained.

When asked about why she loves teaching at Rocky, Manzanares said, “Before coming to Rocky, I really enjoyed living in Fort Collins because of the community, and when I came to Rocky I felt as though I gained a new support system. The culture, staff, and students made it easy to teach here.” Continuing on, she said, “I am a teacher strictly for relationships. I was not the best student in school, but I want to give you guys the support you all need and be able to have a safe place to where any student can come and talk if they need.”