Zelene Blancas, a first-grade teacher at Dr. Sue A. Shook Elementary School in El Paso, Texas, died Monday, her family told CNN. He had a 10-year career as a teacher.
“She was like my wonderful woman,” Blancas said. “She was my backbone and she was like my second mother, even though we’re only four years apart.”
The way she lived her life and the way she spread a message of kindness to her students and everyone around her is the way her family wants to remember Zelene, he said.
“Even though sometimes being a teacher is a little rough … she’s always looked positive,” Blancas said. “I didn’t know until now, but she was a walking angel.”
Zelene Blancas leaves behind her parents, Gloria Luna and Victor Blancas, her brother and niece, Natalia. Her children were her two dogs, Rocky and Chico.
She taught her students to be kind
Chavira said she remembers when Blancas captured the video just before the holiday break in November 2018. The video showed a line of students saying goodbye to a classmate after they took a hug, a handshake, a high height or a fist.
“That was her course every day. She wasn’t doing anything special or anything new,” Chavira said. “The culture in her class was very caring, very loving. She taught her children to be kind to each other and to really look at each other as a family.”
The video showed the kind of classroom environment Blancas encouraged and represented who the teacher was.
“That in itself was her,” Chavira said. “That’s what the culture she created in her class tells you.”
Blancas was a bilingual teacher and most of her students were learning English, Chavira said. Some of her students were new to the country, and others were new to the area. It was up to Blancas to make parents and students feel comfortable.
“Teachers do more than they teach,” she said. “The success he had in the classroom, with the students, with his families, was because he had that passion to make a difference and take it beyond the academic environment for students.”
Blancas was the first to help new colleagues and the first to help anyone in need, Chavira said.
“We are all hurt because we know what a great future he has had before,” Chavira said. “She was a shining star. Our community, our students, her family, are short of that smile, the love, the warmth she contributed.”
Chavira said you can see Blancas’ passion “the moment you meet her.”
She spread love and kindness with pink socks
This passion spread around the world in Blancas’ numerous tweets about her students, the classroom, and her nonprofit work to spread goodness.
Nick Adkins met Blancas on Twitter in 2018, when he saw her video of her students hugging and leaving the classroom.
The idea is that whoever receives the pink socks becomes part of the mission to spread love and empathy, and Blancas “lived the ethos of gifts every day,” he said.
“Zelene Blancas was the best in humanity,” Adkins wrote. “The rippling effect of the love and kindness she has put into the universe by teaching her children over the years is immeasurable.”
Blancas lived the mission, and her legacy is the mission, Adkins wrote for CNN.
“Mrs. Blancas and all the staff and students at Shook are what we should all strive for every day, every moment. She lives in the love she taught and spread,” he wrote.
Pinksocks Life raised the money and donated 1,337 pink socks to school, Adkins wrote in a blog post.
“Her idea was basically to promote kindness, because there’s been a lot of aggression lately, so she wanted to turn that around and make those students change and believe in kindness,” her brother said. .
Blancas said his sister is working on a passion project of her own, which she hopes she can bring to light. He was writing a children’s book and had already drawn the illustrations, he said.
His sister also inspired Blancas to become the teacher’s assistant and follow in his footsteps, he said.
“He mentored me in a personal and professional way,” Blancas said. “Thanks to her, I will follow her legacy and I will become a teacher.”