Close Up Radio Spotlights Brian Horner of Kid Innovation College

Naperville, IL – Brian Horner is a respected educator with a career spanning over a quarter of a century. He teaches in a gifted education program within District 203 in Naperville, Illinois.  He is also the founder of Kid Innovation College which offers academic enrichment to students and is a consultant with the Institute for the Habits of Mind.

Founded in 2008, Kid Innovation College is an academic enrichment camp in the summer that offers advanced and thought-provoking courses that cater to the kindergarten through fifth grade students. Teachers at Kid Innovation College are not only encouraged to explore topics and courses that they have a passion about, but also intertwine important “thinking themes” within each course. These can be essential thinking behaviors such as persistence, empathy, or responding with wonderment and awe.

Brian describes his program as highly metacognitive, which means that he gets the students to think about thinking, which is one of the sixteen Habits of Mind, according to The Institute for Habits of Mind. On April 5th 2024, Brian had the opportunity to speak at the Habits of Mind Conference in Vista, CA, on the topic of Activating Metacognition in the Classroom.

As for the future, Brian plans to continue his teaching. A long-term goal that he holds is to eventually offer consulting to other school districts to help them incorporate the art of strategic thinking within their classrooms.

For consulting purposes you can reach out to Brian at mrhorner.KIC@gmail.com or The Institute for the Habits of Mind