About Us
Finding the Beauty in Chaos
Hankel × Learning With Bear is a place where creativity, curiosity, and imagination come alive. We believe children learn best when they explore, build, test, and play. Our STEAM program is designed to help every student dream boldly, think creatively, and learn with confidence.
We focus on hands-on learning, simple explanations, and joyful discovery. Every class begins with a story or guiding question, moves into fun activities and experiments, and ends with a small project students proudly take home.
Our mission is to help children become problem-solvers, thinkers, inventors, and future leaders. With engaging challenges, robotics, digital creativity, and interactive builds, we make learning exciting and meaningful.
At Hankel × Learning With Bear, we imagine, create, and dare—together.
Our Story
In 2018, Professor Jeffrey “Bear” Sebastian set out to break the boundaries of traditional education. Known by students as Teacher Bear, he designed an ambitious program that replaced memorization with imagination, worksheets with hands-on exploration, and passive listening with active creation. His college courses quickly became legendary—beloved by students, praised by parents, and recognized both nationally and internationally for their innovative impact.
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This vision became known as Learning with Bear, a program built on the belief that students learn best when they build, experiment, design, and discover. As Richard Riley once said, "We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't been invented, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet". This philosophy became the foundation of the entire approach.
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In 2023, this movement found a new home at Hankel International Academy. With the arrival of Teacher Bear, Learning with Bear blended with HIA’s forward-thinking mission, transforming the way students prepare for the future. Today, our STEAM program empowers children to think boldly, solve creatively, collaborate naturally, and approach challenges with confidence and joy.
This is more than a program—it is a new way of learning, shaping a generation ready for a world that is constantly evolving. Here, curiosity is celebrated, imagination is honored, and every child is trained to become a future innovator.
