Estes lived and worked as a teacher in Greece 23 years, advocating for immigrants despite not being native Greek herself. “Greece is a very reclusive society. They looked down on immigrants,” she said, “and I made it my mission to make them feel welcome.” Her allyship and inclusivity has not stayed in Greece, but has traveled here to Centennial High School. Estes has been working with junior Tavroop Kaur,the secondary language team and the curriculum development team to expand the English reading curriculum and make it more diverse. “American history is almost all white males, so working to introduce some new, modern voices in the curriculum is really important.” The team works every year to tweak and update the English book list to make sure to account for the diversity of classic books.
Not only has she witnessed discrimination, but she experienced it in her personal life. “There are these traditional parameters that society has placed on us,” she says. “And I still feel the need to fulfill most of my roles.” Throughout her life, especially after she had kids, she explained that there was the pressure for her to be a good “mother figure, daughter figure and spouse figure.” Her father and her ex-husband were some of the bigger enforcers of these stereotypes. When Estes was a teenager and looking to go to college, her father told her that she shouldn’t go to school, questioning the necessity of it. “Why go to college when you could be a secretary? That’s a perfect job for a woman,” was his mindset. Fortunately, Estes’ older sister rejected that way of thinking and took her on her college tours. “Without her, I don’t think I would be sitting here today, absolutely not.” Even her own daughter was discouraged from going to college by her father, deeming it unnecessary because she was “only going to get married and have kids anyway.”
With the challenges in her personal and professional life come Estes’ firm stance on women’s rights. “No matter what people say, there is not equality between the sexes,” Estes stated. “People can say it, they can do lip service to it, but it’s not accurate.” Estes supports the notion of having a women’s history month, but she said that “We should be uplifting women every single day, not just one month out of the year.”
“Being a woman is a lot of things rolled into one.” She explains the different parts and so-called ‘jobs’ associated with being a woman, from being a mother, a role model, a teacher, and a daughter. “It means living in a world of constant challenges to your ability.”
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