Robin Austin teaches second grade at Oakwood Elementary. She just finished her 19th year of teaching—all but one of those years in the classroom has been at Oakwood.

Austin was born in Tucson and grew up in Phoenix. She started her career in another field—purchasing and logistics—but went back to school when her two sons were young so that she would have the same schedule.

Going into teaching was a change but not a huge departure for Austin. Education is a family affair. Her father was principal at Phoenix Day School for the Deaf and her mom was a P.E. teacher and tennis coach. Austin’s sister is also a teacher at Oakwood.

In fact, Austin and her sister make a great team! In high school they played doubles in tennis and made it to the state tournament twice. Now this sister act team teaches second grade. Austin teaches math to both classes.

“I really enjoy teaching math,” Austin says, and notes, “I love working with my sister...She is a GREAT teacher and I think she pushes me to be an even better teacher. We bounce things off each other all the time which I feel is beneficial to all of our students.”

In her free time, Austin enjoys hiking, pickleball, tennis and golf. She says she started golfing this year with one of her sons.

“I’m a very outdoorsy person,” says Austin. But she doesn’t really like it when the outdoors comes inside the class—namely scorpions! Austin has an aversion to these arthropods, especially when the creepy critters make their way into classroom sinks or lights.

Austin says that one of the things her students might not know about her is that she worked at Disneyland while she was attended college. She worked at Star Tours.

Student Blake nominated his teacher. Blake notes that Austin “is helpful and nice” and that she “makes learning fun.”

Austin encourages her students to never give up on a subject or on themselves. “We all have different strengths,” she says, “but with effort you can be good at anything.”