Zelene Blancas, a first-grade teacher at Dr. Sue A. Shook, in El Paso, Texas, died Monday, her family told CNN. She had a ten-year 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’re only four years apart.”
The way she lived her life and spread a message of kindness to her students and everyone around her is how her family wants to remember Zelene, she said.
“While sometimes being a teacher is a little difficult … she always looked the positive way,” Blancas said. “I didn’t know it until now, but it was a walking angel.”
Zelene Blancas leaves behind her parents, Gloria Luna and Victor Blancas, her brother and niece, Natalia. Her babies were her two dogs, Rocky and Chico.
He taught his students to be kind
Chavira said he remembers when Blancas captured the video just before the holidays in November 2018. The video showed a row of students saying goodbye to a classmate, after choosing a hug, a hug of hands, a maximum of five or a punch.
“This was his class every day. It was nothing that made him special or anything new,” Chavira said. “The culture in her classroom was very affectionate, 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 that Blancas fostered and represented who the teacher was.
“That was for herself,” Chavira said. “That in itself tells you the culture he created in his classroom.”
Blancas was a bilingual teacher and most of her students were learning English, Chavira said. Some of his students were new to the country and others were new to the area. It was Blancas’ turn to make both parents and students feel comfortable.
“Teachers do more than teach,” he said. “The success he had in the classroom, with his students, with his families, was because he had that passion for making a difference and taking it beyond academics for students.”
Blancas was the first to help new colleagues and the first to help anyone in need, Chavira said.
“We’re all hurting because we know what a great future lay ahead,” Chavira said. “She was a bright star. Our community, our students, her family, they don’t have that smile, that love, that warmth that contributed.”
Chavira said Blancas’ passion was seen “the moment he met her.”
She spread love and kindness with pink socks
This passion spread to the world in Blancas ’many tweets about her students, her classroom, and her nonprofit work aimed at spreading goodness.
Nick Adkins met Blancas on Twitter in 2018 when he saw his video of his students hugging and leaving the classroom.
The idea is for anyone who gets the pink socks to become part of the mission to spread love and empathy and Blancas “lived the ethos of the gift every day,” he said.
“Zelene Blancas was the best of humanity,” Adkins wrote. “The effect of the love and kindness he produced in the universe by teaching his children over the years is immeasurable.”
Blancas lived the mission and his legacy is the mission, Adkins wrote on CNN.
“Mrs. Blancas, all of Shook’s staff and students are what we all have to strive for every day, every day. Live with the love you 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.
“His idea was basically to promote kindness because there’s been a lot of bullying lately, so he wanted to turn it around and make those students change and believe in kindness,” his brother said.
Blancas said her sister was working on a passion project of her own, which she hopes she can bring to light. He wrote a children’s book and had already drawn the illustrations, he said.
It was her sister who also inspired Blancas to become a teacher’s assistant and follow in her footsteps, she said.
“She was a mentor to me in a personal and professional way,” Blancas said. “Thanks to her I will follow her legacy and become a teacher.”