Alicia Ernest

Awards/Nominations:

• 2025 PSD Outstanding Educator of the Year Award
• 2025 Charles Redd Center Teaching Western History Award
• 2024 Colorado Council for Teaching Mathematics Top Math Educator Nomination
• 2009 Top Graduate Paper Award, CSU, Western States Communication Association
• 2007 Teacher of the Year, CSU, Nominated by Communication Studies Dept. Dean
• 2006 Teacher of the Year, CSU, Nominated by a group of 24 Public Speaking students

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?

• I am a life-long learner and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to learn with and from my students everyday!

General background information (years in education, degree(s), Universities/Colleges attended): 

• MA Communication Studies, Scholarship Focus: Poststructural Psycoanalytic Discourse Theory, Critical Cultural Theory, and Media Theory; CSU.
• BA Foreign Language Studies (French, Navajo, Japanese); Fort Lewis College.
• Teaching License; UNC.

Interests/Hobbies: 

• I love to read and play board games with my two daughters.
• I coach mountain biking for Sendtown.
• I regularly attend and speak at academic conferences.
• I write scholarship in the domains of History and Communication Studies.
• I like to mountain bike, trail run, practice and study yoga philosophy, and read, read, read (esp. theory).
• Most of all, I love to learn and share that love of learning with my students. I’m so happy to be here! 

What inspired you to get into the field of education?

• While teaching courses at CSU, I observed how students' success was directly related to owning their own learning, knowing which resources were available, accessing their resources, and feeling like valuable, active, and contributing participants in the ongoing scholarly conversation. I believe that these productive mindsets begin when we are much younger and I now get to offer the opportunity to practice these on a daily basis in various contexts in the elementary classroom. 

Thought Provoking Quote: 

• I only have one language, yet it is not mine. -- Derrida, Writing and DIfference, 1978

School/District Responsibilities: 

• 4th and 5th grade Literacy, Social Studies, Math
• Classroom mentors grades 6th-12th
• 2-4 CSU Interns per year
• District Math Curriculum Team
• District Social Studies Curriculum Team
• District Math Adoption Committee
• SAC (School Advisory Council)

About My Classroom: 

• Our classroom is dominant in student-led learning.
• We practice a growth mindset at every opportunity.
• We maintain culturally responsive, culturally sustaining curriculum and practices.
• We collaborate with the CSU English Dept in the Story Exchange Wall for Polaris and larger Fort Collins Community
• We study and practice community building communication.
• We collaborate with the CSU History Dept. to support the annual History Harvest.
• We hold Friendship Circle as a 4/5 crew every week.
• We celebrate mistakes as opportunities for growth.
• Math is a combination of Workshop 2.0, Socratic Seminar, Math Recess, Project-based learning, and Guided Math.
• We investigate our academic, social, and emotional strengths and challenges in order to support our growing identity and our community identity.
• We have flexible seating.
• We have student moderators.
• We center learning on low floor, high ceiling tasks while still holding high expectations for learning and performance goals
• A love of the intricacies of language is woven through everything we do.