After an outstanding 27 years of teaching at the John Cooper school, Sra. Lillia Gallivan will be retiring at the end of the 2018-2019 school year. When Mrs. Gallivan’s colleagues were asked to describe her, the most common response was that she was constantly energetic. Mrs. Gill a US-French teacher, describes Sra. Gallivan as “Patient, and endlessly enthusiastic about her students”.

Throughout her 27 years at John Cooper, Mrs. Lilia Gallivan has taught both French and Spanish classes and has served for 11 years as the World Languages department head. Through her leadership as the department head, Sra. Gallivan has helped grow the department tremendously, adding a new 6th-grade French class, more language electives, and added more faculty members. Mrs. Gill, an upper school French teacher, said that when she started teaching at Cooper Sra. Gallivan helped to support her throughout her transition into the community, and allowed for Mrs. Gill to practice “autonomy and creativity in her classroom”.

Sra. Gallivan herself has become a tremendous contributor to the Cooper community and has continuously brought light into her colleagues’ and students’ lives throughout her tenure. Sra. Gallivan is said to have lost her keys in every corner of campus, and subsequently lost all key tracking devices that her colleagues bought to help her keep track of them. During her time at Cooper, Sra. Gallivan is said to have inexplicably dressed up as Snow White for about a week, as well as wearing two different shoes on several different occasions.

During the Upper School awards ceremony on Wednesday, May 1st, Sra. Gallivan took the stage to present the US World languages award. After recognition of several World Language student’s achievements, Mr. Popp took the stage. In a heartfelt message (spoken in Spanish), Mr. Popp announced the decision to honor Sra. Gallivan’s works and contributions to the John Cooper world language department through renaming the Outstanding Achievement in World Language award to the Lillia Gallivan Outstanding Achievement in World Language award.

Throughout her career, Sra. Gallivan’s belief that learning a language can be fun has positively impacted the Cooper Community in a big way, and our next World Language department head will have big (and mismatched) shoes to fill.