05/09/2026
“Receiving the Esperanza Award means that hope endures.” 🍎
Before she ever stood at the front of a classroom, Guillermina Valles was a little girl sitting quietly at a school desk, trying to understand a language that did not sound like her own.
The school bell would ring and the fear would start all over again.
She remembers going home in tears, begging her mother not to send her back because she thought she would never make it there. But the next morning, while her parents continued chasing a better life for their family in this new country, she returned anyway. Day after day. Carrying fear in one hand and hope in the other.
Now, years later at Solano Elementary School, students walk into a classroom built by someone who remembers exactly what that feeling was like. A room where they are met with patience instead of shame. Where being unsure does not make them feel small. Where they are reminded they belong before anything else.
And slowly, over time, her classroom becomes the place students carry with them long after the school year ends.
Hope lives there now.
Thank you, Guillermina, for continuing to pour that hope into every child who walks through your door.
Click the link to hear how Guillermina turned her own story into a classroom filled with hope for the next generation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czUxZPy8srU
Thank you to our Esperanza Teacher Award sponsors Cox, Salt River Project, Valley Toyota Dealers, HUB International, and Southwest Airlines
