Jill Biden heads back to classroom as a working first lady

[left-of-center2012]

Jill Biden has gone back to her whiteboard. After months of teaching writing and English to community college students in boxes on a computer screen, the first lady resumed teaching in person Tuesday from a classroom at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has worked since 2009.

She is the first first lady to leave the White House to log hours at a full-time job. A working first lady is a “big deal,” said Tammy Vigil, a Boston University communications professor who wrote a book about first ladies Michelle Obama and Melania Trump. The nation’s early first ladies did not work outside the White House. They supported their husbands, raised children and performed the role of hostess.

Some first ladies acted as ambassadors for their husbands. Eleanor Roosevelt was especially active, traveling around the U.S. and reporting back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose activities were limited by polio. She advocated for the poor, minorities and other disadvantaged people, and began writing a nationally syndicated newspaper column from the White House.

Jill Biden, 70, is forging a new path for herself and her successors. The first lady has said she always wanted to be a career woman. She taught at the Virginia community college during the eight years that her husband was vice president and was not about to let the added responsibility of being first lady force her to give up a career she so closely identifies with.

“Teaching isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am,” she says.

https://apnews.com/article/business-jill-biden-6a025ecc48cd6efed9c99ce578fb7fb4

The first lady resumes teaching in person on Tuesday, Sept. 7, from a classroom at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has worked since 2009.
(Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP, File)

[Throck]

1. I could see FLOTUS being the catalyst to get younger people to mask up and vaccinate.

[lagomorph777]

3. And she is training her students in public health.

They could become a corps of public health evangelists.

[Throck]

6. Glad she went into teaching instead of private practice.

[lagomorph777]

2. I wonder which campus?

But I won't dig too deeply.

[question everything]

4. Is this wise?

Secret Service will have to clear campus - yes I know, Whinny Donny’s spawns taxed them to the max, but we are better, right?

Also, if she follow a detailed teaching schedule it will be disrupt when she has to be the First Lady on an unscheduled event.

Dear De. Biden, at age 70 you’ve earned the right to retire; to do what you want when you want and not to be tied to a strict schedule. This was the first thing that we enjoyed.

P.S. For the twitching fingers here: this is not “bashing Democrats” nor it is “spreading” right wing or coocky propaganda.

[left-of-center2012]

5. "do what you want when you want"

That is what she is doing.