Elizabeth Skinner

Elizabeth Skinner is one of the many heroes living and working in the Logan Square community. She lives on Humboldt Parkway, and she has been an assistant professor of bilingual education for 6 years at Illinois State University, speaking both Spanish and English. She likes to read, loves her job, likes music, goes to shows to hear bands. Elizabeth has two kids--a boy and a girl.

    Elizabeth works with students who are finishing up college and doing their student teaching. She wants them to see how important it is that they support the home language of their students. Before working as a professor, she was a bilingual teacher in Chicago. She works around the Little Village neighborhood with a bunch of bilingual students.

    She got really interested in the job that the community organizers do. She started working with LSNA in 2000. She started in Rogers Park and had a program that collaborated with LSNA and that’s how she started working there. As her work, she makes decisions about what they want to see in the community. She wants students to understand the importance of maintaining bilingualism for their students.

Everyone has goals and achievements. Elizabeth’s goal is to teach students as they learn English that they still maintain their Spanish so she’s with a bunch of students in Albany Park helping them accomplish that. Her biggest accomplishment was the “grow your own teacher“ program. “Any graduates from that program would be the biggest accomplishment”, she said. What that program did and does is works with community members who work with moms where they worked in the school for a year and some of them went back to get their teaching degree. Elizabeth’s feels that school closing is just a way to start making money.

    Elizabeth is completely against the school closings. “I know some of the schools that are being shut down are destabilizing schools and forcing kids to go places they don’t feel safe,” she stated. In her view, schools are the last safety matter that keeps the community together and once you get rid of that, there’s trouble when things get destabilized. She’s concerned that if a charter school opens close to KP, KP will lose enrollment and that’s one of the things that causes schools to shut down.

    Elizabeth made me realize how important it is to know Spanish and English especially if you come from a Hispanic culture. We talked about the opportunities and advantages you can have by knowing both languages. I really look up to her and I’m happy that she cares about people’s future. She’s willing to help students that want to come bilingual teachers just like her. She takes her time to teach students her skills and I can tell she’s really patient with them too. What else would you want from a teacher?