Teacher Talk: Getting to know Ms. Lea
Ms. Lea loves to be around her students and can typically be found in her classroom, 407, in Maroon Bells
Ms. Lea is a Social Studies, Humanities, and Psychology teacher at Rocky Mountain High School. Lea decided to change careers after 10 years of working with Battered Women’s Movement. “We were doing presentations at junior high and high schools and Rocky was the school that always had Crossroads Safehouse coming in and that’s where I worked,.” Lea said. She then went to Colorado State University to get her teaching license and worked at Webber Junior High for her first year of teaching in 2005 and has been at Rocky ever since.
Lea was born in Otzberg, Germany, and lived there for her first three years of her life, then she and her family then moved to Aurora, Colorado, due to her father being in the military. Ms. Lea said, “You can take the girl out of the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of the girl.” Lea then moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, to go to CSU for college, but soon got kicked out of the school with a 1.8 GPA after she was diagnosed with Dyslexia at the age of 19.
Lea then went to the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh and got her undergrad in social work, “I was on the dean’s list there because I had to learn to relearn things.” she said. Lea came back to Fort Collins and re enrolled at CSU after lots of hard work to be involved in their teaching program. After being on academic probation at CSU, she got her Masters in Education with a 4.0.
When asked what inspired her to be a teacher, her response was, “You guys. I hated school and there was no inclination of me ever being a teacher because I also didn’t have great teachers when I was in school.” Lea wanted to show some sort of positivity in schools and students and show how there are good teachers.
Lea likes being a teacher at Rocky because of, “The culture, the staff, the students. It’s awesome. There’s more to that, it’s just the feeling of just being here in the environment and the feeling of the family we have here. We really talk our talk and we walk our walk.”
Ms. Lea teaches Asian Humanities, Psychology, World Geography, and AP Human Geography at Rocky. Having her as a teacher inspires many students and is very fun and entertaining. She helps put people at ease about stress and wants to help students with anything. She said, “I teach children. I don’t care about the letter grade that they get; I care about their character and when they walk out this door that they are making an impact in the world.”
Students can find Ms. Lea in her classroom in Maroon Bells, Room 407, or in her office in the Maroon Bells teacher’s office. She wants to get to know every student and share with them her journeys and her struggles that she took just to get to be a teacher.
Sydney Olsen is a Senior at Rocky Mountain High School. On her free time, Sydney works at her job at Poudre Pet and Feed Supply. She also enjoys drawing,...
