My path to becoming an educator, like all things in my life, has not been straight. I fell into first becoming an alternative education provider while working as a college tutor. One day, a man came in looking for a private teacher for his children. For my interview, I was directed to a fenced compound made of multiple hangars inside of a small-town airport where the man, who I later learned was a billionaire and one of the founders of The Internet, lived part-time with his four children and a full time staff, Victorian Aristocracy style.

We parted ways years later when I became a journalist, and, after finishing my undergraduate degrees and acquiring my MFA, I returned to teaching as a college professor at my alma mater of Western Nevada College teaching English Lit, Rhetoric and core composition.

It was during my first year as a college professor that I realized something very drastic had shifted within the educational landscape between the time I had last tutored at the college and returned to teach. I found that my students were missing significant portions of their foundational education, not just in the Three R’s, but in the very building block so understanding how to learn.

I burned out almost immediately my first semester trying to help them, but through hours of researching and talking about this with virtually every other person in higher education I could corner, I came to several conclusions:

1. The education system is broken, not only here in Nevada but nationwide
2. The obsession kids have with screens isn’t just annoying, it is actively harming their cognitive abilities and harming their future capacities for learning
3. Only by returning to hands-on, in-person interactions for both play and learning will we be able to save ourselves as a society.

Instead of packing up my kids and driving to some far off utopia where education isn’t broken, I decided I would give it my all to do what I can right up until the final bell where I’ll have to decide whether or not I want to put my toddler into Kindergarten within our broken system, or be forced to homeschool.

But until I have to face that choice, I rounded up friends, family and colleagues and started an educational nonprofit. I named it Hollow Mountain, which focuses on in-person enrichment opportunities for toddlers, kids and teens that prioritizes social, themed project-based learning with community experts as mentors.

You can learn more at https://www.hollowmountainworkshops.org/