[5] She worked her way through the University of Utah on scholarships, student loans, and as a starving folk singer, graduating magna cum laude in elementary education and later earning her master's degree in instructional technology.

[6] In 1980, Eskelsen García went to work teaching fourth, fifth, and sixth grades[2][better source needed] at Orchard Elementary in the Granite School District in Utah.

[12][non-primary source needed] Her education advice for parents has been published in Time, Working Mother, and Woman's World, and she has been featured on Fox News's Hannity & Colmes and CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight.

[16] In 1998, she was the first Hispanic person to be chosen as the Democratic Party's nominee for a U.S. congressional seat in Utah, raising almost $1 million,[7] and receiving 45% of the vote, ultimately losing to incumbent Merrill Cook in the general election.

During a speech, she said, "We diversify our curriculum instruction to meet the personal individual needs of all of our students, the blind, the hearing impaired, the physically challenged, the gifted and talented, the chronically tarded and the medically annoying."

[21] After the inauguration of Donald Trump, she described him and the nominee for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos as having an agenda to "profitize, privatize and ... throw a middle-class child into the street saying, 'Let them eat for-profit vouchers.

[23] Eskelsen Garcia continued to oppose the administration's budget priorities in 2018, calling the proposed 13.5% cut in education spending a "wrecking ball" aimed at public schools.

[3] She is currently married to graphic artist Alberto Garcia, with whom she published the 2014 book, Rabble Rousers: Fearless Fighters for Social Justice.