Judy Grigg Hansen’s teaching obsession is finding and creating innovative, student-centered activities to help students understand writing processes and techniques. Hansen seeks to design activities and formulate questions that provoke thinking and learning.
Hansen is actively working to improve English teaching at her own institution and across Idaho. Hansen co-chairs 'Passports and Passages: Writing as a Bridge Between High School, College, and the World,' an annual symposium that brings together Idaho high school and college English teachers to discuss teaching and writing.
At the 2005 Idaho Council for Teachers of English (ICTE) Conference, Hansen presented 'Group Conferences: Peer Review That Gets Results.' In 2004, she presented 'Wasabi, Rocks, and Hersheys Kisses: Student Discovery of Writing Principles.' She also co-authored “Aiding the College Transition” for the Fall/Winter 2004 Inland: A Journal for Teachers of English Language Arts about the safety net provided by developmental programs for underprepared, nontraditional, and ESL students. In 2004, she received third place in the Quick Tips contest of the journal Teaching for Success for her article “Call Me By Name.”