Teaching Job Would Set Jill Biden Apart

No first lady has held a paying position outside the White House
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 8, 2020 10:03 AM CST
Teaching Job Would Set Jill Biden Apart
Jill Biden speaks to reporters while campaigning in St. Petersburg, Fla., earlier this month.   (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

"If we get to the White House, I'm gonna continue to teach," Jill Biden said this summer. If she does, CBS reports, she'd mark a first of her own: No other first lady has ever held a paying job. President-elect Joe Biden's wife works full time at Northern Virginia Community College. She taught English while her husband was vice president under President Barack Obama. "It's important, and I want people to value teachers and know their contributions, and lift up the profession." In August, she tweeted, "Teaching is not what I do. It's who I am." Biden said during the campaign that if she's in the White House, she'll lobby for free community college tuition and cancer research funding.

Biden has said she finds her job rewarding. "I teach a lot of immigrants and refugees," she said. "I love their stories, I love who they are as people, and I love the fact that I can help them on their path to success." She's also taught high school and at a psychiatric hospital. Biden has a doctorate, which no other first lady has had in the first 231 years of the role. Her husband had connected the two roles in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, per the BBC. "For all of you out there across the country, just think of your favorite educator who gave you the confidence to believe in yourself," Joe Biden said. "That's the kind of first lady ... Jill Biden will be." (More Jill Biden stories.)

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