Jill Biden Returns To Teaching, First First Lady To Have Job Outside Of White House

First Lady Jill Biden is now the first first lady to have a job outside of the Oval Office.

Biden, who teaches composition writing classes at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), will begin a 13-week teaching session at the Alexandria, Virginia, campus this week.

Biden has been faculty at NOVA since 2009, even continuing to teach remote Zoom classes while on the campaign trail with her husband President Joe Biden.

This semester will be different, however, with students and teachers returning to the classroom, masked up and socially distanced.

“She is looking forward to teaching and communicating in person rather than through the screen,” says Biden’s press secretary Michael LaRosa.

In an essay for Time magazine, Biden described some of the challenges of returning to in-person learning. “A new adventure, messy and magical, is about to begin,” she wrote. “The anticipation and excitement of this time of year is one of the best parts of being a teacher. As we return to our classrooms this fall, it will take all of us coming together to keep our schools safe and open. We must remember that our enemy is the virus, not one another.”

Biden also addressed anxieties about rising COVID cases and the Delta variant. “As this school year begins, families across the country thought we could exhale after so many difficult months and now we’re holding our breath once again,” she said. “It’s been different learning over Zoom and trying to connect and feel that sense of community that, I think, teachers create in classrooms.”

Article by Elizabeth Letsou