It Started With a Second-Grade Teacher

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I think I’ve been creating learning materials since I was about eight years old. When I was in second grade, one of my favorite things to do was play school. Of course, I was always the teacher. My younger brother was recruited as my student, and I would spend hours making worksheets for him to complete.

I’m not entirely sure he remembers this hobby as fondly as I do. As it turns out, I never really stopped.

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From Playing School to Creating Curriculum​

I began my teaching career in second grade, where I saw firsthand how effective my friend and fellow teacher Sheri Skousen’s phonics program was with her first-grade students. Sheri had developed her own approach to teaching beginning readers, and we quickly discovered that we shared the same philosophy:

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When the right learning material doesn’t exist,

sometimes you have to create it yourself.

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Throughout my years in education, I did exactly that—creating and adapting materials when I couldn’t find resources that taught something the way I knew my students needed to learn it.

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Later, as a principal, Sheri and I helped found a performing arts hybrid school where students could learn from home or attend in person. Online K–12 education was still relatively new territory. We began with purchased digital curriculum that needed significant adapting and testing. Later, when our district developed its own online program, I spent a great deal of time revising and rewriting materials to better meet our students' needs.

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My career eventually took me from K–8 language arts to teaching public speaking at the high school and college levels, as well as developing corporate training materials and content for learning management systems.

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Different ages. Different subjects. Different ways of learning. But one lesson stayed with me through all of it:

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Good learning materials matter.​

They should make things easier to understand. They should meet learners where they are. And whenever possible, they should make learning something people actually want to do.​

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Then Blooming Wits Got Its Name

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Years later, my lifelong love of creating learning materials took on a much more personal meaning.

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After my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, her doctor encouraged her to keep her mind active and suggested coloring books. There was just one problem: she couldn’t find any she actually liked. So naturally, I thought, I’ll make some for her.

One day, Mom laughed and said:

"I don’t seem to have my wits about me."

We both cracked up. And somewhere in that moment, Blooming Wits Press was born.

What started as an idea for my mom grew into something bigger: the belief that learning, creating, playing, and challenging our minds shouldn’t stop at a certain age.

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WE CAN KEEP BLOOMING OUR WITS THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES.​

Where We’re Growing Next

Today, much of our work focuses on young learners—building literacy skills, confidence, and curiosity through resources created by educators who understand how children learn.

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But Blooming Wits was never meant to be just for children. From a child learning to read, to a teenager figuring out life, to an adult discovering something new, to an older adult keeping their mind engaged, there is always room to grow.

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Sheri and I are still doing what we were doing all those years ago: looking at what learners need, noticing what’s missing, and creating something to fill the gap.

The audience has just gotten a little bigger.

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Because we never really finish learning. We just keep blooming.​

Grow your mind at any age.