If you want more information about my goals here, read on.
Please allow me to introduce myself:
I grew up on a little dairy farm in Wisconsin. After high school, I left the farm and became a veteran, and now I am married to a Presbyterian pastor and we have three kids. After college, I started teaching in a little charter school in Minneapolis, teaching middle school science.
Changing education for the better is my core mission. There is so much potential for positive change that I have been dreaming about a future where joyful learning has replaced beat-down compliance. This had lead to me creating Innovative Arts class and using maker education to teach students about important personal, mental, and academic issues.
This is a personal mission: I am building the class that my own twin boys will start in 2023. I am glad you found my site, hope that you found it useful. I am working on this every night, weekend, and over every break!
Someday, I hope to have a community of supporters
Starting Innovative Arts has taken a long time. It has been difficult to create a class where students learn how to think for themselves and develop their skills. For now, I need time to develop resources, figure out what works with students, and refine my curriculum.
Someday, I hope to be able to provide free resources, material grants, and even 3D printers to other teachers who want to start up their own Innovative Arts classes. There is just so much to do and so much potential for change in education. I will be working for years to bring a new vision to life in my own classroom and then other classrooms.
The goal is to help kids become unique and confident creators.
This site has been built to help others do the same.
The first Innovative Arts class replaced the middle school technology class in Pine Island Middle school in Minnesota in 2018.
Let’s see what happens next!