It’s nice to look back and imagine forward.

Years Behind:

2005 – Deployed to OIF (I’ve written before about how my time in the military has expanded my wordview and I can’t over emphasize how formative it was, even if I was a square peg in a round hole)

2010 – Graduated, Broadfield Science in Education, Physics

2011 – Started at Minneapolis Academy, an inner-city charter school as the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade science teacher. So many stories from these years.

2014 – Started at Pine Island as the 8th Grade Science teacher. Referendum passed for new buildings

2016 – Fab lab opens with CNC, 3D printing, and vinyl machines. Started www.puzzleshiftcreate.com. I think the oldest blog posts were lost in 2020, a major regret. I would love to see them again.

2017 – Room set up but with no budget it was a struggle.

2018 – First year as ‘Innovative Arts’ teacher. Definitely did not live up to the name. Wrote a terrible manuscript of a book

2019 -2020 — Second year. Covid at the end of year. Started over with www.puzzleshiftcreate.com with new everything.

2020 – 2021 – Third year. Half-in-person, half remote. Survival mode. Re-wrote manuscript

2021 -2022 — Fourth year. Published Season 1 of “Fix Education Ourselves”. Was burned out by the end, so the editing wasn’t great.

2022 – 2023 — Fifth year. Finally solidified the ‘Popsicle Stick Engineer’ and ‘Cardboard Shape Designer’ resources. Class culture and routines overhaul. Started developing Season 2.

Years Ahead:

Next year, finalizing the digital creator, coder, entrepreneur, and wordsmith creator types. Further developing the class culture and routines. Publishing all the things that have come together in class will take time. Maybe figuring out how I want to use the groups features on this site.

It’s taken years and will take more years yet. Hopefully it’ll change education into something better someday.