Mackin Learning honors the brilliance that strong educators, like you, bring to the table and provides motivating frameworks to help you transform how you teach. We listen to your goals and provide guidance in your pursuit to achieve them.
Jennifer McCarty Plucker, Ed.D.
Jen aims to support individuals in personal, team, and professional growth. Jen facilitates virtual and onsite professional learning workshops with teachers in their efforts to engage readers, provide
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choice and voice, and foster critical thinking across the student’s day. Jen’s research and writing has been focused on adolescents’ motivation and engagement in literacy. Prior to joining the team at Mackin, she spent more than 20 years in public education as an English teacher, speech coach, reading specialist, and district administrator.
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Erin Fallgatter, M.A.
Erin is passionate about supporting schools in creating learning environments that reflect the diverse cultures, backgrounds, and interests of all students. With more than a decade of experience
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in teaching and coaching grades 7-12, Erin is committed to equipping educators with the resources and strategies needed to engage and inspire their students through classroom libraries, take-home reading, reading intervention, integrating the fine arts into project-based learning, and more. She leads the Classroom Services department at Mackin, where she and a team of experienced educators with over 120 combined years in PK-12 classrooms collaborate to provide teachers with curated book collections that resonate with every student, foster a love of reading, and meet the school’s literacy goals.
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Lindsay Simmons, M.A.
Lindsay works to support educators across the country authentically and effectively integrate more STEM and hands-on learning tools into their teaching practices. She brings her
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experiences as a classroom teacher and a STEM programming manager to help schools navigate the world of hands-on learning and maker education. Lindsay works with schools to find the right tools to support their learning goals and provides professional development for new makerspace and/or product implementation. She has her master’s degree in art history with a museum studies certificate.
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Ben Tully, M.A.
Ben leverages his degrees in Communications and Design (B.A.) and Teaching (M.A.) to help schools incorporate meaningful maker opportunities for learners. Additionally, he facilitates professional development
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sessions, empowering educators to confidently navigate and utilize exciting maker tools. Prior to joining Mackin, Ben worked as a collegiate advisor, high school English teacher, and speech coach.
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Amy Lamatina
Amy helps librarians and educators confidently use MackinVision and MackinVIA to manage their library collections and support classroom – library collaboration. Amy has a background in special education and STEAM instruction, and
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prior to joining the Mackin team, worked as a Youth Services library specialist in Missouri. In this role, she developed STEM and literacy programming for children and teens and expanded public library/school partnerships through classroom outreach. Amy loves to help schools organize and promote their library materials, increase accessibility, and get students excited about reading.
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Tracie Kreighbaum, Ph.D.
Tracie uses her background in adult and higher education and in public libraries across the U.S to craft engaging and informative demonstrations of MackinVisions’ suite of customizable features
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and functions. She is passionate about and deeply committed to meeting each individual where they are at with their questions, objectives, and needs throughout the demonstration process and beyond.
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Meghan Crandall, MLIS
Meghan utilizes her experience as a licensed school library media specialist to train and support school staff on the use of MackinVision so that they, in turn, can best support their students.
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Prior to joining the Mackin team, Meghan was an educator for 14 years. 11 of those years were as a licensed school library media specialist. Her passion was to ensure that students of all backgrounds, faiths, and cultures were represented in the books they read.
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Jennifer Retka-Wallace, M.I.S.
Jen facilitates training and professional development experiences for MackinVision, helping librarians and educators utilize system features that support library daily operations, manage
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collections, share resources, and feature materials. By guiding them in using MackinVision tools, Jen’s overall goal is to help teacher librarians make their library programs the hub of the school. Before working at Mackin, Jen spent over 15 years in K-12 education as a high school English teacher and as a licensed School Library Media Specialist, with lead experience in all three – elementary, middle and high school – libraries. Jen holds a special interest in computer science education and is specifically inspired to help learners harness the power of technology to become creators and share their own passions with the world.
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Kia Heise, Ph.D.
Kia earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of Minnesota. Before joining Mackin, she taught sociology courses at the college level in Los Angeles and the Twin Cities for several years. Kia’s
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approach is informed by thousands of hours learning how to navigate discussions of social inequality with diverse groups of young people.
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Tess Dwyer
Tess is currently working on her master’s degree in library media and has several years’ experience as an educator, Media Specialist in an elementary school library, and advising in after school coding
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and makerspace programs.
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Have Questions? Contact Us!
Email us at mackinlearning@mackin.com or reach out to us using our contact form.