Mark Barnes is familiar to a lot of listeners. He's the founder of the and guiding force behind the increasingly popular and influential Hack Learning brand. But what you might not realize, is that Mark's academic formative years were purely Dickensian. Mark attended the Cleveland Public Schools at a time when the district had a reputation as one of the nation's worst! Mark jokes that he first learned to "Hack Learning" when he ditched school some 50 times his senior year. He often traveled to school with an intense feeling of trepidation.

From this unlikely, but highly relevant background, Mark has emerged as an international voice for rethinking everything about how kids are taught. Listen to this episode where he talks about his formative years, he elaborates on his successes and failures as a teacher, his launching of the wildly successful Hack Learning platform, and his decision to approach little ole me about writing Hacking Engagement: 50 Tips & Tools To Engage Teachers and Learners Daily, which will be available Septemberish!