We Believe Teaching Is About Inspiring Lives

Dear Educators –

I believe in the ideal that teaching is about inspiring lives. That when we show up and lead with our enthusiasm for literature and physics and life sciences and art that we open minds and hearts. That course content is little without the life we bring to it. That our belief in our students’ brilliance will help them do great things – even when they most challenge us and we want to quit and change professions.

I believe that teaching – in formal and informal settings – is about inspiring lives, even in the face of challenges to Learning. Because if Learning isn’t happening, what are we doing as educators?

So what does Pretty Brainy offer you? Resources. Inspiration. Learning Kits to Empower Students. To Think, Create, Innovate, Collaborate.

What guides your purpose?

As teachers how can we tap in to what drives our students in order to help them learn?

You may appreciate this piece I wrote for Edutopia, To Help Students Learn, Appeal to What They Value.”

Principal Christine Hendricks calls Pretty Brainy a “learning-centered environment.” Focusing on students is what drew me to teaching and what keeps me excited. Even in the face of great challenge.

For you Pretty Brainy’s learning- and student-centered resources can —

  • Enhance and extend your curriculum,
  • Be the basis for your STEM club,
  • Serve your maker spaces,
  • Fulfill the requirements of your STEAM and STEM grants and
  • Help you be the STEAM learning hub for your community.

Learn how to get Pretty Brainy into your school or enrichment program.

With thanks and enthusiasm for a new school day,

Heidi Olinger

P.S. I founded Pretty Brainy on three principle things —

One, my drive to prevent a little girl from experiencing the downward academic spiral that can come with adolescence.

Two, my work with students provisionally admitted to a university that was hanging campus diversity on students whose K-12 years had left them unequipped to succeed in college.

Three, the perspective that education has a responsibility to prepare students to develop a voice and the ability to critically think when using that voice. To prepare students to form questions. Collaborate. Attend to detail. Develop empathy. Mathematically reason. And gain experience in the process of learning, including how to revise, prototype, experiment, fail, develop character from doing so, and keep moving forward.

These inform the resources Pretty Brainy has for you.

Learn how to bring Pretty Brainy to you.