A commitment to social justice and student-centered teaching prompted Denise Hanson to found Root 2 Rise in 2017.

During a 24-year career as a high-school Spanish teacher, she consistently sought innovative approaches to instruction. For example, she found that assigning leadership roles to struggling students built self-esteem and was an exceptionally powerful motivator. When she learned that native Spanish speakers spoke Spanish perfectly but sometimes had trouble mastering the written and reading aspects of the language, she enlisted these students as teaching assistants, where they learned as they graded tests and led small groups.

Hanson never spoke for more than seven minutes in a period before relying on student-led instruction. During tests, she paired students with similar grades. markedly reducing anxiety and increasing learning.

She served six years on a behavioral intervention team. Alarmed by the extent to which underachieving students attempted to avoid uninteresting remedial classes, she improved their access to courses that engaged them.

Hanson earned a BS degree in psychology from the UW-Madison and MA degrees in school counseling and teacher leadership. She was an instructor for K-12 pre-service second language teachers at the UW-Madison for four years. Her teaching philosophy has been featured in several academic journals.

She was a pioneering coach and trainer in restorative justice, developing a school-wide system and leading more than 200 restorative circles. At the first restorative justice symposium in Madison in June 2017, she was a lead presenter, training teachers from twelve school districts and four states. She received two World Language Elementary grants for teaching a second language through science and social studies content standards.