Mrs. Ashley Dugas

A native of Lafayette and a graduate of UL Lafayette, middle and upper school math teacher Ashley Dugas began her teaching career at ESA 16 years ago. “This is the perfect school for me,” she says. “I don’t plan on going anywhere else!” She teaches Algebra I, Geometry, Statistics, and Precalculus, and is an ESA parent as well. Here’s our Q&A with Mrs. Dugas:

What do you love most about your days at ESA?

I truly love the relationships I have with my colleagues and students. They are my family. My home away from home. I love being challenged in my field. I’m encouraged to push myself intellectually, and it’s so stimulating.

How do you teach habits of scholarship and honor to your students?

I encourage students to catch me in math mistakes. If they call me out, I reward the class with a brownie point. Five points in a quarter earns them homemade brownies baked by me. This shows them that it’s OK to make mistakes, and they are always paying attention. 

Scholarship - My main message to students who want the “good grade” but don’t understand why they can’t reach it is this: If you think “I gotta make an A,” then you will grow anxious and struggle to reach that goal. I advise them to switch their thinking to “I have to understand.” This thinking then pushes them to develop good study habits and encourages them to ask me for help. When they do that work, that “A” comes. This develops a growth mindset that they hopefully carry with them in any goal they want to accomplish. For “honor,” I allow them to self-grade quizzes. Not only does it help them get immediate feedback, but I tell them that I trust they are being honest with their own learning. If not, they know they’ll get bitten when they do poorly on a major assessment.

What is your favorite project, unit, assignment or routine that you have created in your curriculum?

1) The Barbie jump for my stats class has been a big hit. It teaches how a strong correlation between two variables does not mean that extrapolation can occur successfully. Assuming too much without considering other confounding factors can be “deadly”…at least for our Barbies.

2) Over the past couple of years, I’ve developed lessons where the students “experience first, formalize later.” The approach is that they work through scaffolded problems in a lesson that they can do in groups. This leads to a concept that I then formalize with proper terminology and notes. Giving students this autonomy in their learning helps me build a thinking classroom every day.

What do you do outside of ESA that is part of who you are, feeds you joy, gives you purpose, or rejuvenates your soul?

Hmmm…my family. They give me purpose. They are my why. We juggle rubber balls and glass balls. If a rubber ball drops, it will bounce. But if we drop a glass ball it breaks. My family are the glass balls, so they come first. I’m fortunate that ESA has supported my family life.

And when I’m really stressed, I love to bake and share with my friends and family.

If you had a year to study anything in the world, what would you be passionate about learning at this time in your life?

Oh geez this is a toughie! Ok, I’ve had a lot of fun making the field day videos. I think I would love to learn more about filming and editing like ExLabs. I think I would have loved to have taken that course when I was a kid. 

What would you tell a new parent/student or prospective parent/student about ESA?

ESA values the WHOLE child.  We empower students to become independent, critical and creative thinkers and doers.  When they leave our campus, they will absolutely thrive and make the world better as they have learned how freedom and responsibility intertwine.  We teach them, “what if…”