Zelene Blancas, a first grade teacher at the Dr. Sue A. Shook Elementary School in El Paso, Texas, died Monday, her family told CNN. She was ten years in her career as a teacher.
“She was like my Wonder Woman,” Blancas said. “She was my backbone, and she was like my second mother, even though we were 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’s sometimes hard to be a teacher … she always looked at the positive way,” Blancas said. “I did not 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 kind
Chavira said she remembers when Blancas captured the video just before the holiday holidays in November 2018. The video showed students saying goodbye to a classmate after choosing a hug, handshake, high five or fistfight.
“It was her class every day. It was nothing she did specially or anything new,” Chavira said. “The culture in her classroom was very caring, very loving. She taught her children to be friendly with each other and really consider each other as a family.”
The video was a look at the type of classroom environment that Blancas cultivated and it represents who the teacher was.
“That in itself was her,” Chavira said. “It in itself tells the culture she created in her classroom.”
Blancas was a bilingual teacher and most of her students learned 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 comfortable.
“Teachers do more than just teach,” she said. “The success she had in her classroom, with her students and her families, was because she had the passion to make a difference and take it further as academics for the students.”
Blancas was the first to help new colleagues and the first one to need it, Chavira said.
“We are all hurt because we know what a great future she has ahead,” Chavira said. “She was a shining star. Our community, our students, her family, are short of the smile, the love, the warmth she contributed.”
Chavira said you can see Blancas’ passion “the moment you meet her.”
She spreads love and kindness with pink socks
The passion spread in Blancas’ many tweets about her students, her classroom and her work with a non-profit organization.
Nick Adkins met Blancas on Twitter in 2018 when he saw her video of her students embracing and leaving the classroom.
The idea is that anyone who gets the pink socks becomes part of the mission to spread love and empathy, and Blancas ‘live the ethos of gifts every day,’ he said.
“Zelene Blancas was the best of mankind,” Adkins wrote. “The ripple effect of love and kindness she brings to the universe by teaching her children through the years is immeasurable.”
Blancas lived the mission and her legacy is the mission, Adkins wrote to CNN.
“Mrs. Blancas and the entire staff and students of Shook are what we should all strive for every day, every time. She lives on in the love she has learned and spread,” he wrote.
Pinksocks Life raised the money and donated 1,337 pink socks to the school, Adkins writes in a blog post.
“Her idea was basically to promote kindness, because lately there has been a lot of bullying, so she wanted to turn it around and make the students change and believe in kindness,” her brother said.
Blancas said his sister was working on her own passion project, one he hopes to bring to light. She wrote a children’s book and drew all 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,” Blancas said. “Thanks to her, I’ll follow her legacy and become a teacher.”