Meet the Teacher: Jen Cloward

Built to Thrive: Teen Health from the inside out

At The HeART Collective, our teachers aren’t just instructors — they’re people who show up every week to share something they genuinely care about. Today we’d like you to meet Jen Cloward, who co-teaches Built to Thrive: Teen Health from the Inside Out here at The HeART Collective in Payson, UT. A homeschool mom of 25 years and a longtime teacher of teens, Jen brings a message she wishes she had heard decades ago — that a woman’s body was never broken, it just runs on a different rhythm than society ever taught her. We interviewed her and this is what she shared.

25 Years of Teaching, and Counting

I have been a homeschool mom for 25 years and have been teaching groups of teens government and leadership classes for the last 13 years. More recently, I’ve been teaching teen girls and their moms about female hormone health for three years now.

I have had a journey figuring out how to work with my own body and hormones, and I wish I’d had this information as a teen — or even as a young mom teaching my own daughters. I am passionate about getting this message out: as women and girls, our bodies aren’t broken. They just run on a different cycle than society has taught us.

What I Want Every Student to Know

I hope every student knows that they are amazing. There is so much power in being a woman, and when we learn to honor ourselves as women, we change not only our own life, but generations to come.

My teaching style is conversational, loving, and funny. I want the girls in my class to feel like they’re talking with someone who genuinely gets it — not sitting through a lecture.

Watching the Light Turn On

As I have shared what I’ve learned, I have loved seeing it change my daughters’ lives for the better. I love seeing the light go on and understanding come, and watching the love for being a woman increase. That is exactly why I keep teaching this.

Outside of teaching, I love to learn and read. I am in the process of putting together a book of book discussions to help families find true principles in classic children’s literature. I also love building systems and teaching others — it is just how my brain works.

If You’re on the Fence

You will be so glad you and/or your daughter took this class. It is so empowering to learn — in an age-appropriate way — what our female bodies are doing and how we can best support ourselves not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. This is a guide for young women to help them through their teen years by giving them tools they can implement every day.

I love the youth, and I love giving them tools to help them grow into the women they are meant to be.

Give your daughter the gift of understanding her own body. Check out Built to Thrive: Teen Health from the Inside Out at The HeART Collective and help her replace confusion with clarity, and overwhelm with confidence.