About Art of Learning

Mission

Art of Learning focuses on sharing the ideas, strategies and tools our top educators rely on. Art of Learning hopes these resources provide children everywhere access to an inspired, confident and charismatic teacher that encourages them to pursue their gifts and talents to better our world.

The Eli Burrup Story

I am a Sr. Project Manager for a software company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In my 20’s, working as a software engineer and unable to shake the feeling that my life was meant for something more, I began the pursuit of my elementary education degree. After receiving my Associates in Education my first child was born. The financial pressure and time commitment required to provide for my family took precedence over my dream and I put my Bachelors degree on hold.

A few years later I found my classroom in the professional services department at my company and finally had an outlet for the teaching skills I was desperate to use and develop. I was building relationships with teams, customers and executive management. I was giving presentations to large groups and implementing training to end users and our customer support team. I loved it!

Half a decade later when my son began school, my interest in the art of teaching children was renewed from the desire to help him excel. I wanted to be a project manager by day and an incredible teacher for my son at night. Still fighting the time and energy commitment to finish my bachelors degree, I reached to the internet for knowledge. I read constantly as a child but as an adult I found interviews an incredible resource to learn so I searched for some with our countries top teachers. To my surprise, the content just wasn’t there! I would find short news clips and interviews but they lacked the depth and specifics I wished for.

This hole needed to be filled! Teachers are the foundation of our communities and their voices and stories deserve our attention. I was inspired to help solve this problem and the seed of what has now become Art of Learning was born. I tried to ignore it but so many things kept leading me back to the idea and in the Summer of 2015 I jumped in feet first. I signed up for the Interview Your Heroes course with Andrew Warner from mixergy.com and set off to track down educations unsung heroes and tell their stories.