Inda Schaenen

Inda Schaenen is a Scholar in Residence at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She is also the founder and executive director of Project Lab St. Louis, an education nonprofit that develops and implements project-based curricula in public schools. These projects are cross-curricular, literacy-focused, and inspired by the meaningful experiences, questions, and concerns expressed by students. Schaenen founded Project Lab St. Louis in 2015 when she was a middle school English Language Arts teacher in the Normandy Schools Collaborative, the district that hosted the very first literacy clinic established by the University of Missouri–St. Louis, where she earned her doctoral degree.

Schaenen’s teaching career began in 2002, when she first taught creative writing for Springboard to Learning, a private-public arts organization that implemented enrichment programs in Saint Louis Public Schools. Since then, her education-related publications include both academic scholarship and essays/articles for a general readership. In 2015, Schaenen authored an oral history, Speaking of Fourth Grade: What Listening to Kids Tells Us About Education in America (The New Press).

Between 1982 and 2002, Schaenen was a professional journalist and author. The newspapers and magazines she wrote for include The Bernardsville News (New Jersey); the Baltimore Messenger; the Towson Times; the Baltimore Evening Sun; Baltimore Magazine; Baltimore Jewish Times; salon.com (a national on-line magazine); the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Commentary Page; the New York Post; Washington University’s Law School Magazine and Arts and Sciences Magazine; the St. Louis and Southern Illinois Labor Tribune; the St. Louis Jewish Light. The books she has authored for middle grade readers include three novels in The Saddle Wise series: Rainy Day Rescue, The Quarter Horse Foal, and School Day Rides (Running Press, 2009). Schaenen also wrote the middle grade novel, All the Cats of Cairo (Brown Barn Books, 2007).