Jennifer Galindo, El Paso educator goes beyond classroom, wins national teaching award

Out of habit, Jennifer Galindo rarely checks her voicemails.

She was working with a student at Desert Hills Elementary School in Horizon City in the Clint Independent School District when she missed the call informing her she was the national winner of July's Amazing Teacher award — and the $5,000 prize that comes with it.

Galindo had won the local round of the Amazing Teacher award — a monthly recognition of outstanding educators nationwide — a few weeks prior. Local winners are then entered into a monthly national contest sponsored by Gannett, its local newspaper affiliates, and, in the case of El Paso, Daw's and Thomasville Home Furnishings.

"I don't know why I happened to look at my voicemails that night," Galindo laughed.

But she's glad she did. The $5,000 check, presented to her at the Thomasville furniture store in East El Paso on Aug. 2 came at "a really great time," just as a new school year begins — her 16th as an educator and first full year as a counselor.

An unintended yet 'natural teacher'

Even before Galindo arrived to accept the award, her father was waiting outside the furniture store eagerly.

George Galindo nominated his daughter for the award over a year ago, explaining how he constantly seeks ways to celebrate and recognize his two children. "Even though I'm 65," he reflected underneath the awning of the furniture store, "I still have a lot of pride in them."

Galindo's father was delighted to point out his award-winning daughter, her boyfriend, her brother and his family as they arrived. The family all live in El Paso, he explained, and are involved in supporting each other.

"We're pretty cohesive," he said.

Galindo went through the public school system in El Paso, graduating from El Paso High School — among the top students in her class, her mother Debbie Galindo proudly interjected — before receiving her bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso.

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Despite possessing an educator's natural ease and warmth, Galindo "did not intend to be a teacher" at the outset of her professional life. Instead, she began her career working as a case manager for children with ADHD in El Paso.

She found the work of a case manager unfulfilling, however. "You've got to do something," Galindo recalled her parents saying when she left to find a new career. So she began to substitute teach.

It was working among the "wild, rambunctious" first graders, "pushing all the limits with a substitute," that her love of teaching — and its challenges — began to crystalize. Learning to adapt to students, classrooms and learning dynamics that were not her own was challenging and stimulating. But Galindo "could easily just pick up a lesson plan and run with it," learning how to teach each new class on the fly.

Within just a few months of starting her substitute work, Galindo realized education was the career for her.

"If I could do this in one day," she said, referencing the extremely short timeline of teaching a substitute class, "I could do this long-term."

In retrospect, it seems like Galindo was bound for a lifetime of teaching. She cited her grandmother Magdalena Renteria as a "pillar" in her life who helped raise her while her parents were working and as a key influence in becoming a teacher. When the two spent time together, "it was always school stuff, learning those letters, learning those foundational skills."

An upbringing like that, focused on learning and teaching, helped her realize she was "a natural teacher." Plus, she added with a laugh, "I'd much rather work with kids than adults, any given day."

A holistic, humanist classroom

For Galindo, working with kids doesn't start or end in the classroom or her counselor's office. Kids are more than students, she noted. They're human beings.

"Students have basic needs that need to be met," Galindo said. "They're hungry, something happened at home that set them off — if those basic issues are not addressed, there's no way we're going to get higher in their learning."

Before she became a counselor at Desert Hills Elementary School last May, Galindo spent 13 out of her 15 years teaching at Loma Verde Elementary School in Socorro ISD, a place she still fondly calls her "home."

At Loma Verde, Galindo honed her holistic classroom manner, which she traces back to her third-grade teacher, "Ms. Rice."

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"It wasn't just her teaching, it was going into that deeper level, really trying to know us as human beings," Galindo reflected. "That really stuck with me."

Philosophies of teaching aside, the work of a teacher like Galindo is rarely straightforward. She often teaches and works with special needs students, an especially unorthodox task that requires constant improvisation and compassion.

In 2016, when one of Galindo's fellow teachers suffered a seizure and could not continue to teach her 22 students, Galindo stepped in to make sure that the kids didn't fall between the cracks without a steady instructor. Overnight her class ballooned to an overwhelming 44 students.

But, with the help of aides and the support of her colleagues and parents, she made it through what was "already a chaotic year" with a class double the normal size.

At the year's end, an announcement came over the loudspeakers: Jennifer Galindo had won the Teacher of the Year award in her school. The announcement and staff coming to congratulate her with flowers were drowned out by the cheers of her 44 students.

Her memory of that triumphant moment is vivid: "I have that picture to this day. It just meant so much. I wasn't going let them sink, and it ended up paying me back greatly."

Hitting the ground running

Regarding her string of teaching awards, Galindo's father jokes that "she should be playing the lottery."

But Galindo seeks out the challenges as much as the victories.

During the pandemic, she undertook a master's degree in counseling at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona, while still teaching classes. Galindo is convinced that "if you went through that period as an educator, you can probably conquer anything."

To go through the pandemic as both a teacher and student was especially demanding. Her parents remember Galindo's struggles with isolation, her heavy workload and teaching students to adapt to online schooling.

Remarkably, she made it through the pandemic and earned her degree in counseling in December 2022. With her new degree, Galindo left teaching and became a counselor at Desert Hills Elementary School in May 2023.

"She hit the ground running," said Esther Castor, another counselor Galindo cites as her mentor, when she joined the counseling team last spring.

"Every day is different, especially at an elementary setting, you never know what's going to happen," she added. But with Galindo, "you couldn't tell that she was a first-year counselor. She's very helpful, she's willing to talk to any kiddo, regardless of the grade level."

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Galindo and Castor agree that "there are not enough hours in the day" to help all the students who need someone to talk to. Castor notes that Galindo often stays after 3:30 p.m. to keep working with students "until the situation is handled."

When she's not winning national teaching awards, accepting checks or getting cheered by 44 students, Galindo appreciates the smaller triumphs, even in the first few weeks of the 2023-2024 academic year.

"When I get a hug in the hall, it is rewarding. It's like I've made some kind of an impact ... on kids who do share life trauma that's happening," she said. "It just makes me excited to see what I can do for them throughout the year."

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso educator Jennifer Galindo named national Amazing Teacher