Family of teachers is inspiring a new generation of students at Las Vegas school

Students who attend Matt Kelly Elementary School have a pretty good chance of being in Ms. Hicks’ class.

The Las Vegas school has four members of the same family among its educator ranks. It started when Sharon Hicks came to the school on J Street to teach first grade. Three of her daughters have since followed: Arianna Hicks to teach fifth grade, and Kaila Hicks and Icsla Hicks Cole in special education classrooms.

They are known by colleagues and students alike as Ms. Cole, Ms. S-Hicks, Ms. A-Hicks and Ms. K-Hicks.

“One of the students thought I was her,” said Cole, referring to Kaila — although she has a different last name, the young women resemble each other and have similar smiles and kind energy.

“He was like, ‘Hi, Ms. K-Hicks!’ ” she laughed. “I’m not Ms. K-Hicks. I’m her sister.”

“They all know us. They’re like, ‘Ms. Hicks, there goes your mom,’ ” said Arianna Hicks. “And then sometimes they’ll go to my mom: ‘Ms. Hicks, there’s your daughter.’ ”

Whichever of the Hicks women they meet, the children of Matt Kelly Elementary will find a role model and champion.

Sharon Hicks grew up in Las Vegas’ Historic Westside. She attended Matt Kelly Elementary herself, decades ago.

She worked as a classroom aide elsewhere in the Clark County School District for 15 years and raised 14 children of her own with her husband, Timothy Hicks, their father. Three years ago, she took a big career step to become a certified teacher.

She came back to Matt Kelly so its students would “have someone to care for them, to not look down on them.”

“In this area, there’s not much support,” she said. “We just have to give them that positive enforcement to let them know that, you know, you can be whatever you want to be.”

Arianna Hicks said she received a good education growing up in CCSD. She also acknowledged that she didn’t have a teacher who looked like her — who was Black — until eighth grade at Molasky Junior High School on the northwest side of Las Vegas.

She wants children to have quality teachers no matter where they live. So she will be one of those teachers, in the heart of the Historic Westside.

The Historic Westside is a historically Black neighborhood, and about two out of every three Matt Kelly pupils are Black.

Hardship also grips the neighborhood. The childhood poverty rate here is roughly twice the valley’s average.

“I had, I would say, one of the best educations that a child could get in Las Vegas. I want to be able to give my students who live in this area that, and then, also, the bonus is that I look like them. They can see that person in the position I am in. They’ll go, ‘I can be a teacher, or I can be a lawyer, or I can be a doctor,’ ” Arianna Hicks said. “No one is telling these kids that you can be a lawyer, you can be a teacher, you can be a doctor, you can shoot for higher things.”

In these first two weeks of school, Arianna Hicks has taught her students how to convert decimals to fractions, how to compose a paragraph so they can write essays, and about inventors Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.

As with Edison, who literally saw light bulbs flicker on, Arianna Hicks says she sees the glow develop in her students, figuratively.

Likewise, when the teacher that Kaila Hicks works with praised a student for knowing how to carry digits in math, “He looked at me. He was like, ‘You taught me.’ … That drives me to want to teach even more, seeing that they have the desire to learn.”

This is a close-knit family of educators, with similar philosophies and similar career arcs. Sharon Hicks started as a classroom aide, as did Arianna, Kaila and Icsla. Another daughter of Sharon Hicks teaches special education at Lincoln Elementary School in North Las Vegas, and a son is in college to become a math teacher; Kaila and Icsla are continuing their education to become certified teachers with classrooms of their own, a transition that Arianna completed this year.

When Sharon Hicks got her teaching license, she asked her children what they thought about her accepting a position at Matt Kelly.

“They’re like, ‘Yeah, Mom, I think that’s it. That school definitely needs you,’ ” she said.

CCSD has struggled for years with profound staffing shortages, with about 1,100 teacher vacancies at the start of the school year this month.

Sharon Hicks and these three daughters could go anywhere, but they choose to stay together.

“My mom, literally, she made a way for us to come here,” Kaila Hicks said. “It was amazing.”

To give to Sharon and Arianna Hicks' Donors Choose classroom supply fundraisers, click here.

[email protected] / 702-990-8949 / @HillaryLVSun