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Teaching Life Lessons

A teacher at heart through and through

Lydia Aranda says her mother is "a teacher at heart through and through."

"She's always looking for ways to help people to understand," says Aranda, formerly a small and minority business expert in Gov. Janet Napolitano's administration, now a VP at Wells Fargo. "She's astute at looking for the underlying meaning. Because of that she can find a lot of humor in things, which is very uplifting, especially in a world that can be very complex."

"I like to study people," Virginia Pesqueira admits. "I love to watch kids, what they do and how they do it."

Pesqueira, 66, is a well-known Tucson activist, the first in her family to attend the University of Arizona.

Aranda considers her a groundbreaker, earning three degrees in various aspects of education. Being a family "pioneer" meant Pesqueira had no one close with whom she could relate, which meant she had to develop a healthy sense of self-reliance.

"I was there by myself. My dad helped a lot," Pesquiera says. "I had a sense of adventure, I think."

Aranda says she realizes how much she is like her mother.

"I am actually happy that I'm like my mother. I can venture out and flow with things pretty well. I attribute that to inheriting that from her."

Aranda believes there is no core difference between her mom's generation of activism and contemporary advocacy. Yet she sees "a lot more crossover as opposed to black and white," Aranda says. "That's a testament to our community. It has become a blending of philosophies and faiths having to exist in a world that is not so clear cut and separated than the generations before us."

Pesqueira, who until recently taught grade school, will likely still substitute. She points to literacy as the key to students' success, because when a person reads, "you just learn how much you don't know yet."

"People have often said that I'm like my mother and I'm very much flattered," Aranda says, chuckling. "When I was little, (she) used to always tell me, 'Oh, gosh! You get so dramatic about things!' She'll be recounting a tale and in my head I'll remember that and think that we're very much alike."