The Innovative Engine (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781518655166)

I grew up all over the U.S.A. I spent childhood summers taking road trips with my family. One of our favorite spots was in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. We explored the area with our canoes, backpacks, fishing rods and adventurous spirits. With the help of a neighbor I constructed a chicken coop out of scrap wood and took care of 25 little red hens and brought more to life in an incubator. I joined a Writing Club in high school. We would wake up at 5am and walk to school to read our stories to our teacher over hot chocolate. She allowed two of us to write a novel during our freshman year instead of attending her class. I taught Kindergarten in Charlotte, NC for two years after college and then moved to Chicago, IL. I worked at a start-up school focused on helping the environment. Eggs from hens on campus were used in school lunches along with vegetables from the school garden. The school was powered with solar panels and wind turbines. Next, I moved to London, in the United Kingdom. The international school where I taught encouraged outdoor learning. We had a key to a "Secret Garden" where children learned about Science and read books in the great outdoors. They captured many bugs in magnified glass jars, took observation notes and released them. I stayed in London for the Olympics, and then moved to San Jose, California. The idea for this story came to me at 3am while recovering from a toe surgery. I moved to San Francisco, CA, my 20th move, to teach students how to write, type and code their own innovative stories and video games at a school started by the Chief Scientist of Twitter. My students created Rube Goldberg machines and used design thinking to create new products. The words hanging above our classroom door: "The Innovators." I love to read, travel, and boogie board in my free time. My former students created art and had an art sale for Action Against Hunger. This is an organization dedicated to ending hunger around the world by providing wells, seeds, and farming tools among other things. Please review The Innovative Engine on Amazon.