Elizabeth Stewart Brooks began her teaching career at a high school in Momence, Illinois at a salary of $1250 per year where several of her social studies students were only a few years younger than she was.  In December 1943, she married Roy Brooks and nearly lost her job when she requested a week’s leave for her honeymoon.  The following year, she moved to New York to be near her husband when he returned home from overseas trips in the Merchant Marine. 

 

In New York she taught at Tuxedo Park, an exclusive private school, and also worked as a teller at City Bank.  After the war, they moved to Texas.  She taught at an elementary school in Herne, Texas while her husband finished college at Texas A & M.  After graduation they moved to Boston where she taught at the New England School for Little Wanderers, a school for abandoned children.  The family moved to La Plata, Maryland in 1950 where Mrs. Brooks taught seventh-grade history and science; and in 1953, Elizabeth and her husband Roy moved to Arlington where she taught seventh grade history and English at Swanson Junior High School. 

 

Following her successes in teaching five classes of forty-eight students each, Mrs. Brooks was appointed counselor at the new Kenmore Junior High School.  The following year, she was appointed Assistant Principal at Kenmore.  After obtaining her master’s degree from George Washington University, Mrs. Brooks served as the principal of Nellie Custis Elementary and Claremont Elementary School.  She was also a counselor and special education teacher at Taylor Elementary School.  The Brooks family, all educators, established this scholarship as a loving tribute to Elizabeth Brooks, an outstanding educator in both Arlington and Fairfax County.