she worked at the Institute to pay her tuition and gave voluntary art classes at Hull House. From 1915 to 1917, she taught art at a private school in Chicago. She subsequently returned to San Antonio to teach art at Brackenridge High School.

     Emily Edward's teaching encompassed many areas - from regular classes to designing sets for plays she staged at the school. Her inventiveness led her to create theater space on the banks of the San Antonio River at the edge of the campus, using one side for seating and the other for the stage with a bridge connecting one side to the other. One of her prize students in this period was Robert H.H. Hugman, who graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin in 1924. Today, we know him as “St. Robert,” designer of the San Antonio River Walk.

     After two years, Emily Edwards left San Antonio to teach art at a mountain mission in Charleston, WV, then designed sets for a short time in New York City before moving to Provincetown, MA. There, she made puppets and staged puppet shows with the assistance of Lucy Maverick, Rena's sister. Again, she returned to Hull House to teach art and then moved back to San Antonio in the summer of 1923.

     She met Rena that summer at the Maverick Ranch where she was caring for her niece and nephew, Helen and Rollin Syfan. She had planned to return to Chicago that fall but decided against it because of a conflict with one of the staff members at Hull House. Instead, she rented Lucy Maverick's house at 220 Belvin Street. Early in March 1924, she happened to meet Rena on the street near the old Market House. The two lamented the building’s fate since it was in the path of the proposed river bypass channel. Emily Edwards recalled their conversation: "Finally Mrs. Green said ‘Well, we can just protest all we wish as individuals, and no one will pay any attention to us. But if we organize, they will.’ I said, 'Then, let's organize.'" Wasting no time, Green marched them over to her friend, attorney Thomas Franklin, to get advice on how to proceed.