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DALLAS- When Katya Echazarreta moved to San Diego from Mexico at age eight, she spoke no English and recalled how sitting in a classroom not knowing what was being said was one of the scariest moments of her life. Yet, her teacher, who spoke no Spanish, would sit with her every day and teach her individually, even giving her books to take home to share with her siblings and her mother.
“It is thanks to her that within one year I was already speaking English, within two years I was reading and writing English, and within three years, I’m now in the sixth grade, reading, writing, and speaking at an eighth grade level,” said Echazarreta, in an address to more than 1,300 urban educators assembled here for the Council of the Great City Schools’ 68th Annual Fall Conference.
The first Mexican-born woman to travel to space, Echazarreta said her experience shows what can happen when educators invest in their students and spend the time required to get them up to par, “instead of just pushing them aside and hoping everything is going to turn out ok for them.”
Ezcharetta’s education has always been one of the most important things in her life, yet despite her excelling in school, her journey to space was not without hardships.
At 17, Echazarreta's parents divorced, and her father left the family. As the only employed member, she took on multiple jobs to support her family while continuing to pursue her education. She enrolled in community college, then transferred to UCLA, where she received a B.S. in electrical engineering.
She pursued a career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and in 2022 was selected out of 7,000 applicants from over 120 countries to become Space for Humanity’s first citizen astronaut, making her the first Mexican-born woman to travel to space.
Echazarreta believes her journey reflects the transformative power of education. "I cannot tell you that I would have gone on to do everything else that I did if it wasn’t for this beginning," she said, emphasizing "how valuable an education really is for a person, and how deeply it can change us fundamentally—not only us, but everyone around us for future generations.”
