The FACS about Ms. Roberts

By Evan Jackson

Have you ever seen a pink-haired lady walking around the school? Well that is the one and only Stephanie Roberts. Roberts is a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher often found in the English hall, and you might have seen her eye-catching room with many things going on inside. You also might have noticed the fun expressive outfits she wears in school. But besides everything that stands out about Roberts, there is more than meets the eye with this fun, expressive teacher.

Roberts was born and raised in Colorado, and graduated from Arvada West High School in 2012. She then went on to major in psychology at the University of Colorado Denver. Before Roberts ever became a teacher, she was actually going to be a lawyer. Roberts states, “if you asked me when I was your age if I’d ever have become a teacher, I would have laughed in your face.”

Roberts ended up going to law school in order to become a lawyer, but as Roberts says, “It was soul crushing, I didn’t feel like I could be myself.” So, eventually Roberts got out of the law scene due to it taking away her ability to be who she really was. After the eventual conclusion to her pursuit of law, she went back to her hometown where Roberts states “I had no idea what I was gonna do.” She then got a job at a local restaurant and she was there for a few months, as well as cleaning houses for two years, which gave Roberts a lot of time to reflect and process on her life and how to continue forward.

Eventually, from a spark of luck, one of her high school friends, Monika, came to Roberts with an opportunity. Monika’s dad was the coach of the middle school Gold Crown Arvada West Basketball team, which, ironically, was the same team Roberts played on back in middle school. Monika’s dad was ready to be done with his coaching career, and so he offered up his job to his daughter and Roberts. Roberts says “Through that, I found out like, wow, I really enjoy being a mentor for kids” And with that, she then went on to realize her newfound passion for teaching. But the road to her eventually ending up as a FACS teacher at Golden was a rocky one.

Roberts already had her bachelor’s degree, and so she had to find an alternative way to get her teaching license. She had to go through PEBC, an alternative licensure residency program, through which she got her social studies endorsement in May of 2021, (five years after her college graduation).

She couldn’t find a social studies teaching job for a long while over the summer and Roberts was stuck. That same summer her mother passed away, only adding onto the stress Roberts was going through. She eventually ended up being a substitute teacher for a year for a FACS teacher at Arvada West, this then led her to get her FACS license, and then ended up meeting former Principal Brian Conroy, and the rest is history.