Honoring Montgomery County’s Estelle Moore
55 Years in the Classroom, and Still Counting!
On Teacher Appreciation Day, Greencastle Elementary School second-grade teacher and Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) member Estelle Moore thought she was going to another assembly celebrating student attendance in school. She didn’t know that behind the curtain were hiding NEA President Becky Pringle and Vice President Princess Moss, MSEA Vice President Nikki Woodward, MCEA President David Stein and Vice President Danillya Wilson, Montgomery County Superintendent Thomas Taylor, her family, former students, and other special guests. They were all there to surprise the veteran educator, in her 55th year of teaching, and to celebrate her service at a school where she is known by students and adults alike as Momma Moore.
Her long career has seen huge shifts to Montgomery County schools—from a majority white to a highly diverse student population to changes to curriculum, enrollment levels, and responses to the latest national education trends and demands. Through it all, she has made deep impacts on her students and community.
As Pringle handed Moore a $5,000 check that she could use however she wished to support her students, her students called out to her “We love you Mrs. Moore!” Moore told the students, “You know, love is reciprocal. When you love someone, they want to love you back,” she said. “I love you, too.”
Current and former students sang Moore’s praises. “Even when I was stuck on something, she helped me and believed in me,” current second-grader Dream Todd told the Baltimore Banner. “Mrs. Moore taught me to always keep trying.” Moore’s former student Shepherd Brown—whose journey took him from Moore’s classroom in 1987 to his job today as a NASA accountant—made the time to come to the surprise celebration as well. “I had ADD and I think she kind of recognized that, and had a conversation with my mom,” Brown told Bethesda Today. “It really just helped spring-board me into understanding that, hey, I may have this kind of challenge, but it won’t stop me from being good in life.”
“It’s not just a privilege, it’s an honor to be a teacher,” Moore said after the ceremony. “Since the age of four, people would say, ‘Estelle what do you want to be when you grow up?’ I said ‘a teacher.’ They’d say, ‘oh that’s so sweet,’ knowing I was just a kid. If you ask me today, what do I want to be, I still want to be a teacher. That’s the greatest position that I know for me.”