Mrs. Hanson |  Sixth Grade  |  Ascent Classical Academy of Northern Colorado

ABOUT ME

Born in Boulder and raised on the western slope, I am a Colorado native and love the mountains. I have a Bachelor of Arts in English from Fort Lewis College and obtained a teacher license from Colorado Mesa University. I taught Junior English and AP Literature at Rifle High School, before working in environmental education in Boulder county and then homeschooling my own children for four years. I have been working in education in some capacity for 15 years.  This will be my third year teaching 6th grade at Ascent. 

When I am not planning lessons, you can find me on a trail or beside a river with my two sons; reading from the always revolving stacks of books around my house;  running very  slowly; or working to improve my very amateur gardening and baking skills.   

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

 An Emily Dickinson poem changed my philosophy of education. Truly, it changed the way that I think about life. I was teaching AP Literature when I stumbled upon it, and it captured-far more eloquently than I had ever been able to-something that I felt about the way many systems operate within our world. In the poem, she artfully writes of a scientist who splits a lark to find its song. At that time, I had begun to feel that was happening within our school--we were dissecting and measuring and mining best educational practices to meet standardized testing outcome goals. We were dissecting the bird to find its song, but we were killing the music; we were losing the life. We were losing wonder! 

Education should be life-giving through the rich feast that we lay before students and through the time that we give them to digest that feast. Education should be a practice that we lend our participation and effort toward, until it becomes a craft--both learning and teaching. I still have much to learn here, but you can be sure I will be making my best effort to learn to teach well.  Education should foster meaningful relationships--between student and teacher; between class and subject matter; between school and life. These relationships and the communities where we build them should encourage us toward becoming our best selves.

I also  believe our culture often underestimates our young students’ capacity to learn timeless truths and appreciate goodness and beauty.  My hope is to place before students things that are excellent and virtuous and to equip them with the tools they need to read with comprehension, write with precision, and think with discernment.  Pursuing these things in the classroom will help us move toward accomplishing our vision as a school:  

To develop the moral and intellectual skills, habits, and virtues upon which independent, responsible, and joyful lives are built, in the firm belief that such lives are the basis for a free and flourishing republic.

It is my great privilege to partner with you in the education of your child.

WHAT I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO

I'm looking forward to sharing the beauty of the great books we will read in literature. I hoping to encourage students to  embrace the challenge of math and explore  scientific ideas,. I am also  looking forward to watching students grow as writers and thinkers across disciplines. This will be a year of growth!

WHAT I'M READING

Twelve Greeks and Romans Who Changed the World  by Carl Richards

Journey to the Center of the Earth  by Jules Verne