About Bearwood Labs

From teacher to software developer

Me having coffee — I had lots and lots of coffee in my first five years as a teacher

My journey into teaching and education all started when I was in my final year of University. I read through the job adverts of our local newspaper in South Africa. Yes, newspaper kids, can you believe it?!

“High school programming teacher wanted.” After blundering through the 7 panel interview, I started teaching my first class of 40 kids the next month. I still remember all the rescue remedies I took with me that day.

5 years later I moved into marketing, then finance, then consulting and eventually landed what I actually studied, back into software development. Those years in teaching really taught me how to design simple, effective software though. Because if my lesson was all over the place and I didn’t communicate the core part of the lesson, I was met with bored faces, sleeping and laughter (and not the good kind) from my students.

Starting as a TpT Seller

While I was teaching I started a TpT store and uploaded two products from it. I was very disappointed that I didn’t get any sales. I even threw a 10% sale at one point thinking that would increase it. I still had a few things to learn.

Starting Bearwood Labs

After revisiting my TpT Store I realised how complicated simple processes were. I wanted to make things easier for other TpT sellers, and soon Bearwood Labs was born.

Where am I from?

Lost somewhere in the world — My son’s snapshot of us being lost somewhere in the world

I grew up in Namibia, studied in South Africa, have German citizenship, and now live in Australia (I know it’s complicated) with my wife and three kids. We love taking adventures together and this has led us to all sorts of places all around the world.

Send me an e-mail if you have any questions or comments or feedback.

Bjorn

PS. If you want to, you are invited to let me know where you are from. I always love to learn about different places around the world. It makes this big, disconnected world a tiny bit smaller