Zelene Blancas, a first-class teacher at Dr. Sue A. Shook Elementary School in El Paso, Texas, died Monday, her family told CNN. She was engaged in her career as a teacher for 10 years.
“She was like my Wonder Woman,” Blancas said. “She was my backbone, and she was like my second mom, even though we’re only four years apart.”
The way she lived her life and how she spread a message of kindness to her students and everyone around her is how her family wants to remember Zelene, he said.
“Even though it is sometimes difficult to be a teacher … she always looked the positive way,” said Blancas. “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 her niece Natalia. Her babies were her two dogs, Rocky and Chico.
She taught her students to be nice
Chavira said she remembers Blancas making the video just before the November 2018 holiday. The video showed a line of students saying goodbye to a classmate after choosing a hug, handshake, high five or fist bump.
That was her lesson every day. She wasn’t doing anything special or new, ”Chavira said. “The culture in her class was very caring, very loving. She taught her children to be nice to each other and really look at each other as a family.”
The video was a glimpse of the kind of classroom that Blancas nurtured and showed who the teacher was.
“She was herself,” said Chavira. “That in itself says the culture she created in her classroom.”
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 both parents and students feel at ease.
“Teachers do more than just teach,” she said. “The success she had in her classroom, with her students, with her families, was because she had that passion to make a difference and to go beyond academics for the students.”
Blancas was the first to help new colleagues and the first to help anyone who needed it, Chavira said.
“We are all in pain because we know what a great future she has for her,” Chavira said. “She was a shining star. Our community, our students, her family, is short, that smile, that love, that warmth that she contributed.”
Chavira said you could see Blancas’ passion “the moment you met her.”
She spread love and kindness with pink socks
That passion spread around the world in Blancas’ many tweets about her students, her class, and her work with a non-profit organization meant to spread kindness.
Nick Adkins met Blancas on Twitter in 2018 when he saw her video of her students hugging each other and leaving the classroom.
The idea is that everyone who gets the pink socks will become part of the mission to spread love and empathy and Blancas “lived the ethos of bestowal every day,” he said.
“Zelene Blancas was the best in humanity,” Adkins wrote. “The ripple effect of love and kindness she has radiated into the universe by teaching her children over the years is immeasurable.”
Blancas lived the mission and her legacy is the mission, Adkins wrote to CNN.
“Ms. Blancas and the entire Shook staff and students are what we should all strive for, every day, every day. She lives on in the love she taught and spread,” he wrote.
Pinksocks Life raised the money and donated 1,337 pink socks to the school, Adkins wrote in a blog post.
“Her idea was actually to promote kindness because there has been a lot of bullying lately, so she wanted to turn that around and make those students change and believe in kindness,” said her brother.
Blancas said his sister was working on a passion project of her own, one that he hopes he can bring to light. She was writing a children’s book and had already drawn the illustrations, he said.
It was his sister who also inspired Blancas to become a teacher’s assistant and follow in her footsteps, he said.
“She was a mentor to me in a personal and professional way,” said Blancas. “Thanks to her, I’m going to follow her legacy and become a teacher.”