Education Caucus
You're invited to speak up for education and kids! The nation's public school students need advocates both in and out of the classroom - that's where you come in. Join Daily Kos' Annie Em (Deborah Mayer), NEA Vice President Lily Eskelsen (Lily's Blackboard) and representatives from other key voices in the education community, including AFT and ProgressNow.
Lily Eskelsen, an elementary teacher from Utah, is vice president of the National Education Association. She is one of the highest-ranking labor leaders in the country and one of its most influential Hispanic educators.
After teaching for only nine years, she was named Utah Teacher of the Year in 1989, and she used that title as a platform to speak out against the dismal funding of Utah schools. In 1990, she was elected Utah Education Association President, her first elected position in the Association. She has since served in key leadership posts, including the NEA Executive Committee and NEA Secretary-Treasurer.
Lily has also served as president of the Utah State Retirement System; as president of the Children at Risk Foundation; as a member of the Utah LaRaza Education Committee; and as a member of the White House Strategy Session on Improving Hispanic Education.
Lily authored a humor column on parenting that ran in 22 local newspapers. Her education advice for parents has been published in Time, Working Mother, and Woman’s World, and she’s been featured on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” and CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” She has been the invited keynote speaker for hundreds of education events in virtually every state and was highlighted by Education World in their “Best Conference Speakers” edition.
For 20 years, she worked with students from kindergarten to sixth grade in the middle-class suburbs of Salt Lake and in the county’s one-room shelter school. She has taught children labeled gifted and children labeled homeless. She remembers the year she had 39 fifth-graders and the year she had 12 special education students in a class of 35. She believes that no matter how students arrive, no matter their learning conditions, and no matter what political tests or labels or punishments they face, educators have the sacred duty to be professionals and to care for the whole child. And she believes that professionalism carries the responsibility to take action, individually and collectively, to fight to make the promise of public education—to prepare every student to succeed—a reality.
