I began my teaching career 38 years ago in a small, poor school district in Bloomingdale, Michigan. Like many young teachers I was idealistic and filled with an energy that I was sure could change the world — or at least a few of my students.
I had a student in my class that first year that was very intelligent, but was always mentally drifting someplace far away from that rural schoolhouse. One day while I was walking around the class I noticed this student had drawn an elaborate pencil sketch of what appeared to be a graveyard. Upon closer examination I could read the epitaph on one of the gravestones: “In memory of all those who died waiting for the bell.” Those words shook me to my core. I didn’t want my students to die waiting for the bell. I wanted them to love learning. My youthful idealism quickly gave way to focused pragmatism. How could I make my students want to learn? How could I make learning interesting?
Since those formative years I have done everything within my power to find engaging methods to teach. Through my research and observations it is clear to me that students only learn when they are paying attention. And the best way to make students pay attention is to make learning fun.
For the past ten years I’ve been able continue to pursue my passion for creative learning through a company I created with my family called Brain Hurricane. We create hands-on content for Kindergarten through eighth grade students in math and reading. We’ve provided free tutoring to low income students in more than 100 districts and more than 400 schools across the country.
I’ve been able to see the positive impact that Brain Hurricane’s creative, hands-on approach to learning has on students. Several years ago my team at Brain Hurricane started working on ‘virtualizing’ our Brain Hurricane content in an effort to capture the same engaging educational experience, but to do it in a more scalable and data-driven manner.
Wowzers uses powerful, data driven instruction to customize a learning path for each student. We combine standards-based and data-driven education with engaging gameplay in a way where neither suffer. Students get individual opportunities to construct their own understanding of concepts in an environment that encourages curiosity and exploration.
In creating Wowzers my hope is to help bring fun and engaging learning strategies to all students, and to make sure that no student ‘dies while waiting for the bell.’
