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My wife, Jess, and I in our wedding this past August.

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Hey y'all! My name is Isaac Heins, and I'm excited for this class! I am currently a middle school Language Arts teacher at Kasson-Mantorville Middle School in Kasson, Minnesota. I previously taught high school for four years, but when a position in the school district where I grew up opened, I knew I had to throw my hat into the ring. Ultimately, my goal is to return to teaching high school English classes, and my admin thankfully support this goal. However, as I teach middle school, I was partially hired to rebuild the writing focus of the curriculum within the middle- and high school setting here at Kasson-Mantorville schools, beginning with 5-8. It's been quite a bit of work to say the least! However, I love "building stuff" in the education world, constantly rewriting curriculum and figuring out ways to better the education process for all. I'm thoroughly enjoying this process. Switching to the younger humans is very different - and a bit chaotic sometimes, admittedly - but I'm loving every minute of it.
In addition to teaching in our district, I also was hired to be the head coach of their Speech Team. In my previous school district, I was able to create a team and have multiple Conference and Section champions in just three years, and it's also been fun to try and replicate this success with a previously-established team at Kasson-Mantorville.

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Me, helping out during a theatre rehearsal during my first year of teaching in Marshall, MN.

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I've known I wanted to be a teacher since I was in second grade, when I remember looking at my teacher and thinking to myself: "man, I could probably do that someday." After graduating from Luther College in 2018, I went and spent a year out in Marshall, MN, teaching high school English classes out there. One of the classes I taught out in Marshall was called "Honors Research and Writing" which sparked my love of specifically teaching writing classes. At the end of the year in Marshall, I made the personal decision to move back to this area to be closer to family and friends (I grew up in Mantorville, MN). After spending three years at Faribault High School, I accepted a job to teach middle school Language Arts at Kasson-Mantorville Middle School beginning in the Fall of 2022. While middle school is a new experience for me, there are several reasons I feel this is the correct move for me, which I highlighted earlier, in the "Who is Mr. Heins?" tab.
For me, teaching is as much a learning experience as it is a teaching experience. Yes, I help my students understand the content and the skills I teach. However, my students also teach me so much about the way the world works, the way humanity functions, and the way society has shifted even since the time I was in high school. Teaching for me has become as much of a hobby as it is a profession, and that has made me fall in love with the profession even more. Although distance learning was difficult, I also came out of it with numerous new strategies of how to make my classes better. Not only that, but my experiences with grad school and with different types of learners in different school districts have led me to feel ready for anything teaching throws at me.

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Yes, our husky Juneau was our flower-dog in our wedding. She stole the show!

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I'm going to be completely honest with you all: outside of school (and grad school), I'm a total nerd. Don't get me wrong, I am the biggest Twins fan you've ever met, and I love being outdoors. However, I'm also an English teacher; I love to read. I actively tell my students that, if they give me a book recommendation, I will read it, no matter the book. Not only am I an avid reader, but I write voraciously as well. I play quite a bit of Dungeons and Dragons (where I write the campaigns we play), and I even dabble here and there with writing short stories and poetry, although I've never attempted to get anything published. I also enjoy cooking and baking, listening to music, and playing video games (plus spending time with my wonderful wife, Jess, and our adorable husky, Juneau).
My students know I'm a nerd; they love it. I've hung countless movie posters around my classroom, and I also have several bookshelves' worth of books. It really adds to the creation of a fun, relaxing classroom environment.

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Why this Class? (And pondering some readings...)

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Why this Class? (And pondering some readings...)

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This is a great question to consider, regardless of if they are a student in this class or in any class in general. Why are you attempting to do something, especially for a graduate course of study? For me, I think the answer lies in the understanding and replication of the processes we discuss in this class. If I can understand how to create the different kinds of writings for my own self and own purposes, then perhaps I will be able to help other students to also replicate that process as well.

For example: Ritter writes that students often will be hesitant or even outright resistant to learning the process of writing. It's tedious, even for those of us who have encountered it for years. However, much like vegetables, engaging in the process of true writing - not simply to regurgitate information, but to explore, to answer hypotheses, to organize and revise, and much more - creates in these students a sense of understanding, of wonder, and of appreciation in the process of becoming engaged and interested in learning. We might not be able to convince them all to go get Master's Degrees in English, but if done correctly, we can hopefully help them become individuals who dig into what they are curious about in order to better understand it.

I am also incredibly intrigued by Gebhardt's idea of inputting our researching for scholarly articles and graduate-level work into our classrooms. I've never considered my classroom as a testing ground before; at least, not in this sense. However, the more I considered Gebhardt's point, the more I realized that I do this constantly already. Whenever we write new/adapt/modify/expand curriculum for our classes, we are doing so because we have a hypothesis we would like to test in some way. Does this text better hit these themes, as opposed to a different one? Can we push the pacing of this class to cover more information? If we alter these assignments, will it result in improved writers, readers, speakers, and thinkers? As someone who loves to tinker with the things I am doing in the classroom - and as someone who is helping my district improve its writing instruction overall - the idea of using the classroom to test out ideas just makes sense to me. This is what has been happening in the past in my classes; the only difference is that I could theoretically use my classes to help inform my scholarly writing.

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(The title of the playlist is misleading - basically, it's all the punk and rock songs I jammed out to while a middle/high school student, and it's such a fun playlist to listen to.)