CONGRATULATIONS, EDWIN!
Baltimore County Teacher Wins 2024 Latinx Teacher of the Year!
Baltimore County educator and member of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County (TABCO) Edwin Pérez is the winner of the Latinx Education Collaborative 2024 Latinx Teacher of the Year. There were 116 nominees from across the country for the organization’s 2024 award.
Pérez is an educator-activist who attended MSEA’s Minority Leadership Training and is now chair of TABCO’s Minority Affairs Committee. His leadership journey includes taking roles leading, with others, MSEA’s and TABCO’s upcoming social, racial, and economic justice work.
As an educator, Pérez is committed to representation. “Within our schools and school districts it’s important to encourage youth leadership by creating youth-led clubs and organizations,” he told the LEC nominations committee. It is there, Pérez says, where students can learn and shine.
Outreach is also a large part of his work and he models both representation and leadership for his students through creative partnerships in the Baltimore area. He’s been a part of a Baltimore-based student-led group called SOMOS—Students Organizing a Multicultural and Open Society—and the group Unidos Somos Fuertes at Parkville High School. He is also active in community groups, partnering with the Multi-Lingual Community Partnership and the Baltimore County Council PTA to provide support, connection, and representation for multi-lingual families. CIELO—Creative Immigrant Educators of Latino Origins, a part of the Creative Alliance in Baltimore—is another partnership Pérez has nurtured. CIELO has created programming to elevate and support Latino youth in the area.
“My students keep me going,” he says. “I wake up in the morning thinking about all the things we can accomplish together with their inspiration, messaging, work, and ideas.”