Libby Ester

Libby has been a fifth grade teacher at North Shore Country Day School for fifteen years.

One of her favorite parts of the job is developing units that take the students out of their school community and into the larger community. She especially enjoys a collaboration between the fifth graders and residents of the adapted Hill Arboretum apartments in Evanston in which the fifth graders and their partners create objects for 3D printing to make some aspect of daily life easier for the Hill Arboretum apartment residents, most of whom navigate their lives in wheelchairs. Another favorite unit takes her fifth graders to Chicago’s “Little India” on Devon Avenue as part of a study of Chicago’s neighborhoods. The students interview and film shopkeepers there about their stores and their neighborhood. Back at school, the students make iMovies that showcase the rich culture of that stretch of Devon.

Before she began teaching fifth grade, Libby was involved in the Evanston schools as a tutor, volunteer, and PTA President at Kingsley Elementary School, where her two boys attended. She loved being in an elementary school so much that she pursued a MAT at National Louis University when they reached Haven and ETHS. Before her first son was born, Libby had been a lawyer. The most satisfying of her legal jobs was representing juveniles charged with crimes, which she did as a supervising attorney at the Legal Clinic at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law just after she completed a clerkship for Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Libby is excited to join the board of Y.O.U., because she is passionate about helping ensure the youth it serves have access to caring, dedicated adults for academic and social/emotional support in the crucial hours just after school. She is also committed to Y.O.U.’s engaging, rich programming provided in a safe and caring environment.