Ingrid Albrecht self portrait

Last week, I had one of those unexpected pleasant surprises after picking up the phone and getting to meet a new TeachStreet Pro member, Ingrid Albrecht. Ingrid is a Chicago painter and watercolor teacher and she’s offering a fantastic assortment of first-time painter and watercolor classes in the Chicago area in the coming weeks.

For other aspiring Pro Members, you really should check our her profile — she not only uploaded a great looking banner (that incorporates one of her paintings) but has also added 3 showcase listings, more than 20 reviews from past Chicago art students (twenty plus!), has great classes (with prices ranging from $170 to $285) and is enabled for TeachStreet payments. I especially like her description, that talks about how her grandmother got her started painting at age 4 — it’s always great to hear how people’s passions were ignited. If you’re in the Chicago area and have had a hankering to learn how to watercolor and/or paint, Ingrids Originals would be a great place to start!

We woke up to the awesome Groupon Seattle newsletter in our inboxes, and lo and behold, it featured one of our awesome TeachStreet Cooking teachers, Alyssa Fritts, and, if you act quick, you can get one of her Mozelle’s Creations cooking classes for half-price!

Just click this link to visit the Groupon offer page, or click the image below — congrats Alyssa!

Or, find other great cooking classes near you.

Have you always wanted to learn how welding works?  Me too!  So, last weekend, 5 of us (including Twitters Courtney Johnston (@c_johnston), Jason Vonnieda (@vonnieda), and Jeff Smith (@JeffreySmith), plus my wife and I) took a Seattle Welding Intensive class to learn about welding, and to get get hands-on experience and practice with several different types of welding equipment.  In three words, “it was awesome!”.

Class was held at the Hazard Factory, in South Park (a neighborhood south of Seattle, near the Georgetown neighborhood), and it was amazing how fast the 5 hours flew by — we learned about the different types of welding (MIG, TIG and Stick) and got to practice with different machines — we were actually welding things together in the first 1-2 hours, and I’m actually feeling competent enough to do some work around the house — really, I highly recommend it.

The teacher, Rusty Oliver, has been welding for the last 13 years, and is also a sculptural artist — he was a fantastic instructor (he said that his mom was a teacher, so he learned the skills from her), and made it a fun day that I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget.

This video was from early in the day, as he explained the differences between MIG and TIG welding:

And, here are a few photos of us decked out in our gear:

I have the benefit (or curse) of having been a CPA in a prior working life, having started out my career with Arthur Andersen after I graduated from college.  I quickly (it only took me 7 short years) figured out that the life of debits and credits wasn’t for me, but now that I’m working as an entrepreneur, I’m thrilled that I have that background under my belt.

For many other entrepreneurs with backgrounds in engineering or marketing, it isn’t so easy to quickly digest financial statements and projections — for those who live in Seattle, help is here — I met Diane Renihan last year, and she has awesome financial experience working with Avelle (formerly known as Bag Borrow or Steal), and many Seattle startups, and she’s now offering Financial and Accounting Boot Camp classes to Seattle entrepreneurs.

Kat here, with one more installment of “Meet a Teacher.”

At the Teachstreet world headquarters, we recently spoke with Susan Snyder about all things Qigong. I’ll let the video speak for itself, but boy, I was so impressed to hear of the healing effects of Qigong (pronounced CHEE-gong) in everyday life! This interview is certainly one you don’t want to miss.

To learn more about Susan’s practice, you can check out her profile on Teachstreet.

There are quite a few qigong classes being held right now. You can take a class from Susan or find qigong listings in your location. Take a class!

This week for “Meet a Teacher,” we’re featuring Katrina Hellbusch, a belly dance instructor who knows all of the right moves. Katrina is the Artistic Director at Seattle’s Skin Deep Belly Dance Studio, and has been teaching American Tribal Style for quite a while now.

What’s American Tribal Style, you say? Well, check out this great conversation from our Teachstreet world headquarters.

If you’re interested in taking a class with Katrina, you can check out her profile on Teachstreet or sign up for the newly-listed Bollywood class coming to Seattle! Sway your hips on over to check out these great teachers and classes on Teachstreet.

At Teachstreet, we’re always looking to hear about what our teachers are up to, why they love to teach (and learn), and what they are truly passionate about.

We recently spoke with Seattle piano teacher Anita Manuel about her love of the piano. If you’re 5 or 50, Anita can sure teach you a thing or two about tickling the ivories! She shared her wealth of knowledge with us last week, including information about what type of piano/keyboard a beginning student should purchase, what types of books she uses with students, and about her classes for both children and adults.

You can watch the interview above, learn more about piano teacher Anita Manuel, or check out great piano lessons near you.

More of our interview series will be posted within the coming week. Stay tuned for more great interviews!

The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Week 1 “The Selected Few” from Andrew on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, we were thrilled to finally meet Brad Feld in person – he’s sort of a big deal in the tech/startup space, as both an experienced entrepreneur, blogger, early BBS hacker, passionate investor, and one of the founders of TechStars.  TechStars is a startup incubator with locations in Boulder, CO and Boston, MA (and hopefully soon in Seattle… hint, hint…) — in a nutshell they help encourage and teach wannabe entrepreneurs how to build companies, teams and successful products.

The recently launched their first original web series, The Founders, which will track three tech startup companies throughout the summer as they relocate to Boulder to take part in the highly selective program.

The 14-episode series, which releases weekly, will follow startups The Next Big Sound, Everlater and ReTel through their founders (Alex White, David Hoffman, Samir Rayani, Natty Zola, Nate Abbott, Adam Rodnitzky, Scott Roberts and George Aspland).

I just wanted to give a shout-out to a new TeachStreet teacher, Dana La Grutta — he called the office yesterday, and after speaking with him, I got a bit intrigued about his class on ‘Dutch Oven Cooking‘. I know that he’s in Livermore, CA so the class isn’t relevant for all of our readers (unless they’re planning a trip to the East Bay Area, but I loved that he’s added a Dutch Oven Cooking class, and if he were in Seattle, this is totally the type of thing that I’d check out on a weekend like this one, when I’m a bachelor for a few days.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I highly recommend that you check out Dana’s class — tell your friends!

One of the joys of working at TeachStreet is getting to meet incredibly interesting people who are passionate about teaching people new things that they love.  An excellent of example of that was a few weeks ago, when I met Amish Bhavsar, the co-founder of LazyMaths.com.

LazyMaths is the first and only website featuring a comprehensive collection of Speed Math shortcuts and Smart Math techniques. It offers users a unique and fun way to learn mental math, increase their confidence and zoom up their math score.  And, what’s even better, is that they’re happy to teach you their tricks with free samples on their website and also in-person math tutoring, starting at $30 per hour (it helps if you’re in the Secaucus, NJ area, but I bet that you could convince them to join eduFire for online learning!).

Many students face difficulty in Math and have started hating the subject because even after spending a lot of time studying it, they just don’t seem to get the right answer. Moreover, most are so dependent on a calculator that they simply can’t seem to solve even basic math problem without using it.

What’s the square of 89 or what’s the simplified value of the 1/ [1+1/ {1+1/ (1+1/4)}]?
Try solving those in under a minute without a calculator. Most people can’t. That’s where LazyMaths comes in. LazyMaths helps anyone to attempt Math problems in unique ways never before taught in schools.

LazyMaths is divided in two sections – Zappers & Don’t Solve.

Zappers is the home of Speed Math shortcuts. With Zappers, you would learn many interesting shortcuts that will help you master basic math tasks like multiplication, division, squaring of numbers, etc. Zappers is great for those trying to improve their mental math skills.

Don’t Solve is the home of Smart Math techniques. With Don’t Solve, you would learn how to simply attempt a Math problem and get the right answer without actually solving it and save an awful lot of time while eliminating mistakes. Don’t Solve is great for those giving any exam like SAT, ACT, GMAT or GRE.

Whether you love math or you hate it, you would only love LazyMaths.
Whether you are a student, parent or a teacher, you would learn a new math at LazyMaths.
Whether you are taking a middle school exam or the Math Olympiad and everything in between, your score would only improve with LazyMaths.
Whether you are taking the American GREs, GMATs, SATs or ACTs, you would build your skill and confidence with LazyMaths.

Go ahead experience Math in a whole new way.

And, check out some of their awesome math articles and tricks that they’ve written on TeachStreet – we love them!

• Sex and Math
• Speed Math shortcut to Square Any number ending with 5
• Why Maths and not Math?