I have been asked how to use vnc to log into a Linux machine from a Windows machine using SSH and I have no clue what to do or how to begin. I also need to know which ports on the firewall need to be open and what services I will need to activate to do this. Can anyone help me with this soon? Thanks

I think the windows program PuTTY can be used as your client. It has to be configured to tunnel port 5900+(display#) where display# is usually 1 for the first client, 2 for the second, etc.
There are two different directions when setting up the tunnel, you want to do it where the local windows side accepts the connection as a server, not the other way around. See PuTTY documentation on this because I don't have a windows computer to test it.

Then when ssh is connected from windows to linux, run the vnc client and connect to the vnc server on localhost:5901 and it will be tunneled to the linux computer.