Lily Eskelsen García Takes the Helm of the NEA
September 1, 2014 by twalker
Filed under Featured News, Top Stories
Filed under Featured News, Top Stories
By Brenda Álvarez
As a child, Lily Eskelsen García was quiet, studious and introverted. The second eldest of six siblings, she often played alone with her dolls while her sisters played together. She kept her head in books, did well in school, but never talking about her future.The Lily Eskelsen García of today is far from quiet. Speaking to delegates who gathered in Denver this summer for NEA’s Annual Meeting, she served notice on those who try to undermine public education with deceptive and unproven reform practices. “We know what is at stake and it is why we are who we are. It is why we are fearless and why we will not be silent,” García declared.
She heard the call to teach while serving salad in a preschool cafeteria in Colorado Springs, Colo. She was good with kids and the gift was noticed. A year later, she was promoted becoming the aide to a special education teacher who suggested she attend college and become a teacher.
First, she became a teacher’s aide and then put herself through college on student loans, scholarships, and as a starving folk singer. She graduated magna cum laude in elementary education, earned a masters degree in instructional technology, and started her teaching profession at Orchard Elementary School outside Salt Lake City.
“She does what she wants to do and when she wants to do it,” says García’s mother, Chillie Pace, who is originally from Panama and emigrated to the U.S. after marrying García’s father, Bobby Earl when he was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone with the U.S. Army.
García’s “she does what she wants to do” spirit helped her ascend as an educator and as an NEA leader. In 1989 she was recognized as Utah’s Teacher of the Year. And in 1990, she was elected president of the Utah Education Association (UEA) as a write-in candidate.
Along the way, she has understood that her work was about more than her students. It was about being engaged and getting involved in the full spectrum of education. And she worked to instill the same commitment in her students—some whom have reached out to her years later.
Former fifth-grade student Chetta Defa is an example. Decades after leaving Orchard, García received an email from Defa who wrote, “The lessons you taught me during that time have proven to be invaluable. I learned that whatever the problem, you can be a part of the solution. I learned just being aware of things isn’t enough. You have to get involved to make a difference . . . You taught us to all do our part.”
In and out of the classroom, García has been doing her part for more than 30 years.
Teacher of the Year
An arbitrary moment helped to catapult García into the powerhouse that she is today. Her Orchard teaching Lily Eskelsen García Takes the Helm of the NEA | NEA Today:
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