San Diego, California, the home of “Cat in the Hat” and other Dr. Seuss favorites, is where Gloria Pereyra-Robertson was born, educated and started her teaching career. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and one of twenty teachers in her family. She is a second language learner, who had to learn at an early age to overcome language barriers, racial and discriminating situations throughout her life and even in her teaching career. These experiences empowered her to become the teacher leader she is today, and this is also why for the last 21 years, she has dedicated herself to working with second language learners, students who come from poverty, and migrant students and their families.

Her educational background and teaching licensure includes: B.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of California, San Diego (Revelle Campus) and M.A. in Bilingual Cross-Cultural Education from National University, San Diego. She has held a Bilingual Cross-Cultural Language and Academic Development (BCLAD) teaching license with an ELL endorsement from California. She also has an Oregon teaching license with an ELL endorsement. Gloria has taught six years in the San Diego Unified School District in a 90/10 bilingual kindergarten class, half day and all-day kindergarten sessions.

She currently teaches an all-day kindergarten class at Washington Elementary in Medford, Oregon. (NOTE: She is has worked in Title 1 schools for her entire teaching career and has taught two half day kindergarten sessions for 3 years, and all-day kindergarten sessions for 12 years for the Medford School District.)

Gloria is also the 2017 Oregon State Teacher of the Year and the third Latina in the entire State of Oregon to earn this honor, and the first Hispanic teacher in her school district to earn this title. Some of her other accomplishments include: being nominated by the OEA for the 2018 NEA Foundation Award for Teaching Excellence, the OEA 2017 Presidential Citation Teacher of the Year Award, blogging for Scholastics Let’s Find Out Magazine, contributing to the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) Social Justice Book List (via Brett Bigham the 2014 Oregon State Teacher of the Year), is a member of NNSTOY, trained by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), a cooperating teacher with Southern Oregon University, mentor teacher, has worked as a peer coach and on kindergarten district academic teams, kindergarten teacher presenter, Medford Schools Foundation Grant recipient, and is on the Oregon Department of Education’s Kindergarten Assessment Advisory Panel.