- In all seriousness, let's talk
about what you want to accomplish as a first lady.
I know education is really important to you.
- Very important.
- Why you're my favorite.
And I grew up with an educator for a mama
and y'all work so hard, so tirelessly
and sometimes it's a very thankless job.
And so I know that education is important.
I know military is very important to you
- Yes.
personally, and anything else like
you're really wanting to focus on
- You know, I, I am fighting for free community college.
I've been doing that
since we were in the Obama Biden administration.
I mean, it's very important
to me and my students and, and I've been fighting, you know
to change the face of cancer as we know it.
I don't think there's one American family
that hasn't been touched by cancer
and it's not a Republican thing or a Democrat thing.
It's a, it's a human issue. It's an American issue.
We must get cancer under control.
And then right now I'm focused on, you know
getting this pandemic under control.
- Amen.
- Before we do anything, we, you know, we
we have so much to do, but we have to get the pandemic
under control and get, you know, people back
to work and kids back in schools and we have to
get people vaccinated and Joe's working so hard
to get everybody in this country vaccinated so.
- Yeah, we can get back to some kind of normal
- [First Lady] Yes.
- I just would personally love to just go to a dinner party.
- Ya!
- Like, I mean, my kid now just got back in school
physically but I was just like, Whoa,
I can't wait for that to end but you,
this is one thing I love about you,
You're, you still keep your job.
- I do.
- Cause you still work in community college
and you're also the first lady.
That's a lot of, as a woman that loves to be busy myself.
How do you find balance, especially
with a family involved in that as well?
- Well, you know, I think, I feel like I'm just
like you're saying, every American woman who's working
and try to take care of a family and yeah
I love my teaching job.
And then I have everything in all the issues
that I'm working on in the white house.
So it's like every other American women woman.
And I think, you know, moms have had it.
I mean, they were struggling before the pandemic
and I think it's just really exacerbated everything
that moms have to handle.
And now they're helping their kids online.
And, and by the way
haven't our teachers been so amazing,
I just love, love love our teachers.
(applause)
- Shout out to my kids school because it's
it's a hard thing because teaching isn't, I mean, you go
to school to learn how to be a great teacher
and it is a gift innately given I think not
everyone is great at teaching.
So it's an incredible thing that I think people now realize.
I've been shouting it for years just
- Thank you.
- Because I have a spotlight and my mom was a teacher.
Well, and it's, it's really important.
And I think people are just now, unfortunately
a silver lining from this whole situation has
been realizing how hard it is to be a teacher.
People are like, Oh, I have to wrangle my three kids.
I'm like, teachers have to wrangle like 25 to 30.
I'm like, I'm, it's a hard job.
- Yeah.
- And I, I love that one time you spoke about, you know, in
in your sessions, cause you do a lot over zoom, right?
- [First Lady] Uh-huh.
- Everybody's doing over zoom
and you're sitting there teaching your class
and you have mothers that have their kids
like crawling on them or their babies.
- Oh ya, oh ya.
And they have nowhere to put them, it's a hard thing.
- And so that's why you say like, COVID
it'd be nice if we figured this out.
Cause it was already hard enough to begin with.
- Yes. It was already hard enough.
You know, I see from my students, I mean, they're
you know, and I'm the one thing I have to
say is there is hope there is hope coming.
I mean, we're, we're gonna do better with childcare.
We're going to get jobs.
We're going to get our kids back in schools.
We're going to do better with food insecurity.
I mean, there is hope so that's why I think I hear
that from so many people who are saying Jill
we now feel like we can sort of breathe a little bit.
You know, we see the light at the end of the tunnel
and I think that's so important for all Americans.
- I agree. We need that.
I cling to it sometimes, as a parent.