By: Ernest Gurulé
When Jill Biden, America’s First Lady, criss-crosses the country you can bet that spreading the word about her passion—education and the nation’s community colleges—will be at least a part of her agenda. Over her lifetime, Dr. Biden, in Denver over the weekend, has navigated her way through this educational portal beginning first in the classroom and rising to its top levels. Her heart, she says, will always be with students and in the classroom.
“The truth is, I could not give up teaching,” she said. “It’s just who I am,” she told an audience of more than 650 at Saturday evening’s Latin American Educational Foundation gala. She currently teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College, one of many stops on her teaching odyssey.
Depending on the day, the classroom is either her first or second job. But every day, education is her passion. “My students remind me why that other half of my life matter to me so much.”
Dr. Biden attributes her dedication to the community college system to the way it can transform a young or even older mind, one that has not yet realized their value and potential. Education, she believes, is the one thing that can reshape, redirect and inspire a dream. “In my writing class, I’ve seen students find their voice when they lay down their lives on paper and discover a confidence they didn’t even know was hidden inside of them,” she told Saturday’s audience. “I’ve seen how a college degree can change their lives.”
Dr. Biden’s Denver stop was her second in the state in the last three months. She accompanied President Biden to Boulder days after the Marshall Fire swept away hundreds of homes in December. Coincidentally, another fire forcing the evacuation of hundreds was also burning near Boulder as Dr. Biden spoke. Fortunately, this time there were no homes lost or damaged from Saturday’s fire, though crews fought through the night to keep it under control.
But along with acknowledging the fire and its potential to spread across an already singed Boulder County, Dr. Biden also took the time to share with the audience a few moments on the President’s visit to Poland where he was speaking with NATO leaders on the war in Ukraine. The President, she shared, also took time to visit with Ukrainian refugees who fled their country as Russian tanks, bombs and missiles destroyed their homes and homeland.
Earlier Saturday, Dr. Biden was the keynote speaker at the Community College of Denver’s White House Initiative Latino Economic Summit. In a sun-dappled conference room the First Lady, Secretary of Health and Human Services Javier Becerra and a host of federal and state officials spoke about the important role community colleges play and will continue to play into the future. They will, said Dr. Biden, be ground zero for “the next generation of leaders.” She and other speakers also discussed health care along with the importance providing high speed internet to every corner of Colorado and the nation.
While community colleges often provide the next step in building an educational foundation for recent high school graduates, they’re also vital for others well past high school and already in the workforce and seeking to learn new skills for new careers. But community colleges may soon be playing a new and unforseen role in helping the country recover from the still unknown educational toll the pandemic exacted on a whole generation of young minds.
When COVID forced the shutdown of schools in Colorado and elsewhere and ushered in virtual learning for young stu- dents, an educational nightmare slowly creeped in. Despite the best efforts by school systems, some children essentially checked out. The reasons are myriad. It could be anything from poor parenting to parents having to make the choice between working and monitoring their children’s schooling. It might even be something as basic as a lack of internet connection.
Whatever the reasons, the absence from the classroom caused by the pandemic created a still not fully quantified learning gap, one that may not have been anticipated when COVID-19 ensnared the nation and world. Future researchers will study the COVID era and report just what was lost. But community colleges may also be a tool for recovering from and repairing at least some of the damage caused by the virus.
The unintended consequences of COVID, said Joe Garcia, Chancellor of the Colorado Community College system, are both unknown and looming. Students, he said, need to be “actively engaged in learning.” “When they are forced into a purely online environment, often without the necessary supports at home, they become disengaged…that puts a great burden on colleges to help remediate the learning loss.” Garcia said closing the gap on learning loss and opening the door for engagement “is what community colleges have always done.” In years to come, they will be put to the test.
For her part, Dr. Biden engaged Saturday’s crowd with a message of hope and encouragement and her message was driven home with the help of a young woman whom she said was the perfect embodiment of what community college provide.
The young woman, Brionna Rodas, LAEF scholar, who introduced the First Lady called herself a ‘non-traditional’ student who, just a few years before was lost in one of young life’s fogs. Searching for a path and direction, any sliver of hope, she found herself in Pueblo and a couple of time zones away from her family’s tropical Miami. She shared that after taking an apartment “behind Pueblo Community College,” and on a whim, she enrolled. There she found a passion. She graduates next Fall from CSU-Pueblo with a teaching certificate.
“Every person who gets the chance to reach for their highest ambition creates a domino effect,” said Dr. Biden. “That’s the power of education.” It is the connective tissue “to our classmates teaching us kindness and compassion for each other,” she said. Education she intimated doesn’t always ensure success, but it does improve the odds.
(La Voz Bilingüe is a longstanding media sponsor of the LAEF gala.)
Jim Chavez, Executive Director of the Latin American Educational Foundation reported a successful outcome, with an approximate $500K raised for student scholarships and 630 guests in attendance. Dignitaries included Governor Jared Polis. First Gentleman, Marlon Reis, Senator Michael Bennet, Former U.S. Secretary Federico Peña and wife Cindy, and various Colorado State legislators, students and community leaders.
