A Teacher Who Lifts the Bar Higher: Dr. Constance Nielsen Honored with Herb Kohl Award

(This article appeared in the Madison Catholic Herald on April 16, 2026)

At St. Ambrose Academy, excellence in education means calling students to something greater, a spirit embodied in Dr. Constance Nielsen, a veteran teacher whose dedication was recently recognized as one of 100 outstanding educators awarded the prestigious 2026 Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Teacher Fellowship.

The fellowship comes with a personal award of $6,000 and a matching grant to the Academy to further support student learning and school initiatives.

This is not the first time a St. Ambrose educator has been recognized. In 2023, the Foundation recognized another longtime faculty member, Mr. Michael Kwas, as an outstanding educator in Wisconsin. As lifelong learners themselves, Nielsen and Kwas are pillars of the Academy’s commitment to excellence in educating grade 6 through 12 students in the greater Madison area.

Raising the Bar for Students

For those who know Nielsen, the honor comes as no surprise. Since the school’s founding 23 years ago, Nielsen’s impact in the classroom and in leadership roles has shaped the very foundation of the Academy, where she has consistently challenged students to rise above expectations while walking alongside them with unwavering belief in their potential.

Her philosophy is both simple and demanding: students flourish when they are called upward. Reflecting on the insights of 19th-century intellectual Orestes Brownson, Dr. Nielsen explains, “Too many teachers put the bar within the student’s reach, when what they should be doing is holding the bar just above their heads so that they reach up higher… If you hold the bar above their heads, they will surpass it every time.”

This conviction is not abstract theory; it plays out daily in her classroom.

Whether guiding ninth graders through Homer’s Iliad or leading discussions on The Song of Roland, Nielsen refuses to underestimate her students. She recalls one student who initially felt overwhelmed by the Iliad, only to be passionately debating its heroes just weeks later. The transformation, she insists, begins with belief: students must know their teacher has faith in them.

That faith is paired with a commitment to forming independent thinkers. A devoted practitioner of the Socratic method, Nielsen structures her classes around questions rather than lectures. “I can’t chew your food for you,” she tells her students.

Instead, she guides them to wrestle with ideas themselves, a method that has left a lasting impression. As a teacher at Marquette University, Nielsen was frequently surprised by the number of students who said that no teacher had ever asked them their own opinion, a problem she is determined no St. Ambrose Guardian will ever face.

Forming Strong Minds and Character

Equally distinctive is her approach to failure. In a culture often focused on performance and perfection, Nielsen sees failure as essential to growth. “No one learns anything without learning how to fail,” she says, “whether playing piano, parsing Latin poetry, or learning bicycle tricks.”

By modeling humility, openly acknowledging her own mistakes in class, she teaches students resilience and perseverance, helping them learn to “laugh at failure and carry on.”

Her classroom rigor is matched by her attentiveness to each student’s individual journey.

Affectionately reminding students that “red means love” when their papers are handed back with abundant, detailed, red-inked feedback, Nielsen ensures that every assignment becomes a dialogue for growth. Students are never left wondering how to improve. Instead, they are given clear, constructive guidance and encouragement to reach the next level.

A Lasting Impact on Catholic Classical Education in Madison

Her impact, however, reaches far beyond her own classroom. Nielsen played a foundational role in building St. Ambrose Academy itself.  At the turn of the century, the renaissance of the classical education movement was in a nascent form.

Joining the Academy in 2003, its inaugural year, Nielsen has been at the forefront of this movement. She has spent the last 23 years developing the curriculum, training faculty in classical pedagogy, developing graduation requirements, inaugurating many of the early student clubs, and creating new administrative positions to support the growing enrollment. Nielsen’s impact has been instrumental in forming the Academy’s identity as a thriving Catholic classical school of more than 250 students today.

Dr. John Joy, Dean of Faculty and Interim Head of School, emphasized how deeply deserving Nielsen is for this award, noting that “there cannot be many students who have graduated from our school without being deeply impacted by taking at least one class with her and there are certainly none who have not benefitted from her wisdom and guidance in the development of our rich classical curriculum.”

Forming Lifelong Learners

Central to her work has been a commitment to classical education, a model that emphasizes critical thinking, primary texts, and the formation of the whole person. For Nielsen, this approach is not about nostalgia but about cultivating lifelong learners. “You inspire love of learning by loving to learn and by learning in tandem with your students,” she says.

True to that principle, she continually reinvents her teaching, never teaching a class in the same way. In one recent example, she challenged herself and her medieval English students to learn to pray the Our Father in Old English – a project she initially thought “too difficult for us novices”.

By embracing the challenge alongside her students – researching Old English, finding guides on pronunciation, watching videos on YouTube – she turned it into a shared adventure in learning. Within weeks, the class was praying the Fæder Ūre together and by the end of the quarter they all had it memorized.

The Herb Kohl Educational Foundation recognizes teachers who demonstrate excellence, leadership, and a profound impact on students. In Nielsen, those qualities are abundantly clear. She stands as a witness to something higher: that young people are capable of greatness when challenged, supported, and believed in. By holding the bar just above their heads, Nielsen has helped generations of Guardians not only reach it but surpass it.