Jesse

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Jesse is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at Montclair State University. He is jointly appointed in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the College for Education and Engaged Learning as well as the School of Computing in the College of Science and Mathematics. He specializes in research on learning design and technology, STEM & CS education, and AI in education. More importantly, his research is centered on equity and asset-based pedagogies such as culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies as well as universal design for learning. In addition, his research interests include learning analytics as well as the learning and cognitive sciences, in particular, active learning and the ICAP framework. He currently teaches courses on STEM Education for Early Childhood Educators, Computational Thinking for K-12 Learners, Inclusive CS Education, Python, and Statistics. In addition, Jesse also has over 10 years of K-12 experience teaching physics, computer science, and math in NYC.  During his 4-year tenure in NYC public schools, Jesse was a founding teacher of EPIC high school North, an innovative Title I school that sought to bridge opportunity gaps by integrating project-based learning, mastery-based learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, restorative justice, and social-emotional learning pedagogical practices. Before taking on his role as a public educator in NYC, for 6 years in Daechi-dong, South Korea, he taught the SAT, most AP exams, and consulted for college applications with a portfolio of students who have matriculated into all the top university institutions worldwide.

 

Jesse identifies as a neurodiverse individual, also referred to as neurospicy, with both ADHD and Autism Spectrum. He has encountered many difficulties throughout his childhood including in-school and out-of-school suspended for the majority of his K-8 experience, bullying from peers who didn't know any better, and parents who did nothing to support his neurodiverse needs. At the same time, he has had pivotal positive experiences such as his time spent at Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth summer programs. He was able to turn things around and has been developing his meta-cognitive capacity for executively taking action to help regulate his life experiences. Though he is not an expert on Autism and ADHD, he does have a wealth of knowledge from life experiences, shared stories from other neurodiverse individuals, and over a decade of working with young people.

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Excited to partner with Duageeso, Jesse will be our resident guest speaker for the "Navigating ADHD and AuDHD Workshop".  The goal of this workshop is to understand what ADHD really is. Not from a clinical psychologists' or a counselor's perspective, but rather from what it feels and looks like from the actual lived experience. I will discuss signs and distinct markers of ADHD, the extent to which medications can help and also hinder executive functioning, and strategies for how to better understand your neurodiverse child and to help guide them towards developing their own executive functioning skills. The workshop will also have a large portion reserved for Q&A since much of neurodiversity is a spectrum, so are the differences in the actual manifestations and lived experiences of your child.