I am a lifelong, passionate educator. I dedicated my entire adult life to teaching and serving in Denver Public Schools. My 33 year career began in 1985 as an ELA-S elementary school teacher.  I also was a middle school and high school teacher in a variety of subjects in English and in Spanish including math, reading, social studies, English Language Acquisition, advisory, and a travel class. By the time I finish my term on the Board, I’ll have proudly served for 41 years in DPS!

I currently work as an adjunct professor at the University of Denver in their Teacher Education Preparation program and in the Curriculum and Instruction Department of Morgridge College of Education.  I also am the curriculum director for Educators’ Institute for Human Rights where I work with our partners in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.  I am an independent contractor for EF Tours as I continue my passion for educational travel.  Since 2006 I am a Museum Teacher Fellow for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and have worked to provide conferences and seminars for teachers and professors across the country and in El Salvador regarding Holocaust and genocide education. I love teaching and working with partners all over the world to bring more peace and understanding across so many boundaries. I also work at a ranch in Franktown on the weekends.

I was elected to the Colorado Association of School Boards’ Board of Directors in 2019 and re-elected in 2022. I have served as the delegate to the Delegate Assembly, chair of the Legislative Resolutions Committee (LRC), a member of the Federal Relations Network (FRN), and was elected to the Executive Committee.  I also co-chaired and now chair the Equity Committee.  I enjoy getting to know board members from across the state.  I am also a member of the National Association of School Boards. 

I received my B.A. in Elementary Education and Spanish from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa in August 1985. I received my M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of Colorado at Denver in August 1990. I received my PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the University of Denver in August 2016. My dissertation, The Meaning of Educational Travel in the Lives of Urban Middle School  Students: A Transformative Mixed Methods Study, examined quantitative data from DPS and qualitative data from interviews with former travelers and a focus group chaperones. In addition, I hold a Colorado Professional Master Teacher License and am a National Board Certified Teacher (Middle Childhood Generalist) since 1999. I am certified in English Language Arts, Social Studies, Linguistically Different (ESL), and Spanish.

My daughter Ekaterina (Katya) is a simultaneous bilingual in Russian and English. She is DPS graduate who attended Denison Montessori, Kepner Middle School, and George Washington High School. She is at the University of Michigan working on a PhD. I am from a small town in northern Minnesota and love spending time in the woods and on the lake.  In the summers I spend time in Minnesota with my family at our cabin and in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I have loved books since I was little and am an avid reader.  I enjoy horseback riding, yoga, walking, traveling anywhere, skiing in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, and cooking vegan food for anyone willing to try it.

I enjoy meeting people from across our DPS community so please email me if you’d like to find a time to meet:  carrie_olson@dpsk12.net.