Patrick Calkins is a drama teacher, Synthetic Phonics teacher and sports coach living and working in Hong Kong.  He is an interdisciplinary artist, playwright, and visual artist, with degrees in Engineering and Interdisciplinary Arts.   His approach to all his projects is teamwork, collaboration, and design.  

Calkins has a 30 year career in engineering and general contracting, and has designed and built structures, sculptures, rooms, and sets for a wide variety of clients.  His Synthetic Phonics method of teaching English to non-English speakers is based on a system of letter sounds, long and short vowel sounds,blending and decoding. His goal is to get non-English speakers speaking aloud with confidence.  His Drama Everywhere project is designed to get kids involved in creativity and boost their confidence and teamwork through the collaborative process of making theater.  

Calkins moved to Hong Kong from Chicago in 2011; he noticed a problem with the systems of teaching English- people could read and write, but not speak.  He adapted a method of immersive focus on making the sounds of English words, giving language learners a basis for the spoken language.