Meet 2025-26 NJ State Teacher of the Year
Gillian Ober
By Kathryn Coulibaly
Gillian Ober can pinpoint the exact moment she knew that teaching was for her.
“I was standing in my classroom in Thailand during monsoon season,” Ober remembers. “It was pouring rain outside and about 110 degrees in the classroom. I was soaked to the bone, but somehow also sweating, and I thought to myself, how am I not miserable right now? I’m standing in a puddle, it’s hot, and it’s wet. The old me would not have enjoyed it, but as I looked around the room at my students engrossed in their project, I was filled with joy. Something had changed in me, and my discomfort didn’t matter. I was teaching and filled with happiness watching these students succeed.”
Ober’s love of language and diverse cultures started at an early age. When she switched from private to public school in seventh grade, she already had been studying Spanish for several years and found she had a knack for it. In eighth grade, she was enrolled in a one-on-one Spanish class to meet her growing language abilities.
“My teacher was Ms. Palian. We would spend the whole period speaking and doing activities,” Ober says. “By the time I left eighth grade, I was able to converse and function in Spanish. Ms. Palian encouraged me to apply to one of the magnet schools Monmouth County offers. I ended up going to Freehold Regional High School (FRHS) studying Spanish and Russian.”
At FRHS, Ober encountered another educator who would open doors for her, this time to Russia.
“My high school Russian teacher was like our little babushka, a grandmother,” Ober recalls. “Mrs. Holinko was in her 70s and she took 20 teenagers to Russia. She was the teacher who taught me that the relationships you build with your students are sometimes more important than anything else you teach. Her job was not easy, but she got to know all of us and our families. She made us feel seen and like someone cared about us. Mrs. Holinko even came to my high school and college graduations! Mrs. Holinko passed away a few years ago, but I will carry her love of teaching and dedication to her students with me always.”
Ober had another life-changing experience in high school. At 16, she spent the summer living in Barcelona.
“People thought my parents were crazy for letting me go to this summer academy at 16, but I just fell in love with the experience of being somewhere out of my element,” Ober says. “I loved being a newcomer. Where I lived in Barcelona was right on the border with Catalonia. If I walked in one direction, people were speaking Spanish. In the other direction, people were speaking Catalan. I got to experience what it is like to be the person who people are frustrated with because I didn’t understand the language. Fortunately, people helped me and receiving that kind of patience from others is a feeling I remember often now that I am an educator.”
Ober attended Boston University, earning degrees in Hispanic Language and Literature and English. She got a writing fellowship that afforded her the opportunity to work with international students who needed assistance writing in English. Ober became the unofficial ESL tutor.
“I worked with a lot of students from China, and I loved working with them,” Ober says. “They were so brilliant, but their ability to write and speak in English was holding them back. They were doing chemistry lab reports and high-level math, and other things that I could never imagine. The barrier for them was the English piece of it, so I became their go-to person. I felt fulfilled by it.”
Teaching in Spain and Thailand
After graduating with degrees in English and Spanish, Ober searched for the right next step. She was accepted to a program through the Spanish Ministry of Education to become a language and cultural assistant in Spain. Ober ended up working at a couple of middle and high schools in southeast Spain.
“I loved teaching in Spain,” Ober says. “I was working with unbelievable teachers who welcomed me into their classrooms and into their lives. I tutored their kids, and they invited me over for lunch. It was a one-year program, and I loved the community I’d made there. I was surrounded by people from all over the world who had diverse experiences, but I didn’t really know if I loved teaching or if I loved living there and speaking Spanish. I knew I needed to challenge myself.”
In 2016, Ober applied for Princeton in Asia and was placed in Phang Nga, a town of 10,000 people in southern Thailand.
“Princeton in Asia is about building mutual understanding and taking part in authentic cultural exchange,” Ober recalls. “Did I experience culture shock? Absolutely! I was making a local Thai salary. I had a simple house with no air conditioning. But I learned that year what I truly needed to be happy. This was the moment I had been waiting for. I was immersed in a beautiful culture, helping kids learn a new language and truly loving teaching.”
Returning to New Jersey
After her year in Phang Nga, Ober returned to Colts Neck and immediately applied for graduate school at Monmouth University. One month after landing back in the U.S., she was studying education.
“It was super competitive to find a teaching job when I finished grad school in 2018,” Ober says. “I studied Spanish and ESL because I wanted to have options. I worked as a graduate assistant at Monmouth University and helped publish some pieces with my professor, Dr. Chiu-Yin (Cathy) Wong. After graduation, Monmouth offered me a position as a professor. It was exciting to be a recent grad who was asked to come back and teach. It’s a moment I am still really proud of.”
While at Monmouth, Ober was awarded the Excellence in English as a Second Language Award and the Dean’s Award for Completed Research. She also received the 2019 Distinguished Clinical Intern Award from the New Jersey Department of Education for her work student teaching at Ocean Township High School, where she credits her cooperating teacher, Cara Tevar, for the immense growth she made that year as an educator.
After graduation, Ober taught Spanish as a leave replacement in Manasquan from January through June.
“My time at Manasquan was amazing. I had a fantastic mentor teacher and an incredible supervisor. I felt that I got a full year of teaching experience in the six months I was there thanks to the mentoring I received. I found myself gravitating more toward multilingual learners. There was something about teaching multilingual students that fills my cup in a different way. I wanted to help these students catapult their lives.”
Ober began working in Freehold Borough with fifth-grade students at Park Avenue Elementary School in 2019. Despite navigating the challenges of COVID and post-COVID education, Ober maintained that love of teaching, thanks to her co-teachers and students.
“This year, I’m in a new position in the middle school teaching seventh grade,” Ober says. “I worked with an incredible team during my time at Park Avenue and learned so much from my co-teachers and multilingual colleagues over the years. Now, I teach my own ELA class for emergent multilingual learners, and I push in to support my language learners in math classes. What’s been incredible this year is that a lot of the students in my class were my students in fifth grade. Seeing these students who have been here now for a few years, and how they have grown, has been really cool to witness.”
Advocating for students
For Ober, being named the Monmouth County Teacher of the Year was a shock.
“When I was named the Teacher of the Year for Park Avenue Elementary, I told my principal, Patrick Mulhern, that I was going to pursue Monmouth County Teacher of the Year,” Ober says. “Patrick told me, if we’re doing this, you’re going to win. He wrote an incredible essay on my behalf, but I was still in shock when I won.”
For Ober, it’s still sinking in that she is the 2025-26 New Jersey State Teacher of the Year, but one perk in particular stands out for her.
“I’m so excited to have a platform,” Ober says. “I’m so eager to have an opportunity to advocate for my students, and all multilingual learners. Imagine being a child trying to find your place in a new country, learn a new language and hope that your story is met with empathy instead of barriers. I want to amplify the voices of my multilingual learners and my fellow educators, and to make sure to pass the microphone to those who might not get it.”
Ober’s family, which includes her parents and two sisters, is possibly even more excited for Ober than she is.
“My family has seen all the things that teachers do behind closed doors,” Ober says. “They’ve seen the things we bring home, the things we carry with us, the things we are about, the things that we do that go unrecognized. I know so many teachers who could just as easily have won this, but I was chosen, so I want to use this to celebrate other teachers, particularly multilingual teachers. We don’t always get the spotlight, so I’m really glad to have the chance to educate others about what we do and how important our work is.”
As New Jersey State Teacher of the Year, Ober will enjoy a six-month sabbatical where she will work with the New Jersey Department of Education in Trenton and throughout the state.
In addition to the sabbatical, courtesy of program sponsor Educational Testing Service, Ober also will receive $3,000 worth of technology equipment. NJEA will provide a rental car, equipped with EZ Pass, to help her travel to speaking engagements and meetings across the state. NJEA also will provide complimentary access to all major NJEA workshops and training opportunities, a $1,500 clothing allowance, media training and communications support and funding for a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with the other state teachers of the year and the president of the United States.
Kathryn Coulibaly is an associate director in the Communications Division. She can be reached at kcoulibaly@njea.org.
