Meet Brenda Álvarez
Title: Senior Writer/Editor
Years at NEA: 18 years
Last year’s NEA Today story, “We Will Not Erase History,” about Oklahoma teachers who persist in teaching about the Black Wall Street massacre in 1921, typifies the beating heart of Brenda Álvarez’s work.
“These lessons [taught by our Oklahoma members] are so mind-opening for students, in broadening their critical-thinking skills and their compassion for people with different experiences,” says Brenda. “Writing that story made me think the future is going to be so much better because of these teachers and what they’re teaching students. It’s all about honesty in education and an accurate curriculum.”
A senior writer for NEA Today, Brenda not only tells the stories of NEA members—she helps them to tell their own stories through a storytelling training that she developed in 2019. “It’s about showing them the power of their own voices,” she says.
Fun Facts about Brenda
Brenda has traveled to 41 states on behalf of NEA.
During a visit to N.H., while seven months pregnant and running to keep up with the work, Brenda fainted in a school hallway. Her hero? The NEA-member school nurse who sent her to the hospital.
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