Krissy LaFlech

I've been a teacher for 7 years, but my background is not in education. I was a district manager for a global coffee company, Starbucks, for 13 years. When I was hiring, I saw huge gaps in soft skills, and when I would do a root cause, it always came back to things we don't teach anymore in high school. My husband and I relocated to Indiana from Chicago, and my best friend was a teacher who told me they needed a business teacher. I laughed in her face because I'm covered in tattoos, have a loud mouth, and don't like kids. But the school hired me on the spot, and I've never had teacher training. I was a very late diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia at age 30, about to graduate college, when a professor noticed I really couldn't read. I'm a firm believer in C's get degrees, and I wish I would have had a teacher like myself who would have given me something different to aspire to. I teach real-world skills through the lens of entrepreneurship in a live working incubator where student ideas come to life. I've been at Munster High School for just about 5 years now, and the community backs me 100%. I currently oversee and help mentor 39 different businesses. I teach a project-based learning course, not from a textbook, because I don't believe in exams. I do a fast-fail model and push students to failure because I believe these kids have to fail as early as possible. I want them to leave with resiliency, and I want them to be prepared for the workforce on their own terms.