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Jenny Brackin Resume

Educator, Explorer, Creative
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EDUCATION

Master of Education (M.Ed.) Curriculum & Instruction, Focus on Arts Integration
Lesley University

  • 4.0 GPA

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)Elementary Education & Art
University of Colorado-Boulder

  • 3.85 GPA

  • Graduated Honors with Distinction

SKILLS

  • Creative Curriculum

  • Hands on

  • IB PYP

  • Community Building

  • Inquiry Based

  • Arts Integration

  • Mentoring

  • Nature

  • Orton Gillingham

  • Investigations Math

  • Experiential

  • Project Based

  • Innovation

  • Outdoor Education

  • DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)

  • Lucy Caulkins

  • Collaboration

  • STEAM

WORK EXPERIENCE

Lead Teacher & Leadership Team / Mackintosh Academy, Boulder
June 2011-June 2023

  • Taught kindergarten, first, and second grades

  • International Baccalaureate (IB) School for Gifted and Talented & Twice Exceptional students

  • Responsible for all curriculum development, planning, and implementation

  • Inquiry based, hands on, project based, experiential learning

  • High level of differentiation, wide range of needs and abilities

  • Challenging academics & rich affective social/emotional curriculum

  • Led many special initiatives including building a low ropes course and an observation beehive

  • Taught 100% outdoors during COVID

  • Mentored many teachers in the school including student teachers

  • On the school’s leadership team helping to drive strategy and policy decisions for the school

Grosvenor Teacher Fellow / National Geographic
Jan 2017- Jan 2019

  • Highly competitive two-year fellowship though National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions

  • Incredible professional development including an expedition to the Arctic

  • Became a National Geographic Certified Educator

  • Developed curriculum for National Geographic

  • Served on National Geographic's Regional Education Board

  • Co-initiated, planned, executed, and facilitated the first ever Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship alumni conference with over 100 attendees and had guest speakers including Vicki Phillips (VP of National Geographic), Sven Lindblad (Owner of Lindblad Expeditions), and many explorers

Founder and Director / Adventure Summer Camps & After School Enrichment
June 2013-Aug 2020

  • Conceived, directed, and taught many summer camp and after school enrichment programs including Dragon Camp, Fairy Camp, Wilderness Survival Camp, Junior Wilderness Medical, Magical Creatures camp, African Safari Camp, Painting and Poetry Camp, Stop Motion Camp, and Creative Writing Camp, Art Camp, Arctic Art and Science, etc. to children ages 5-12

  • Developed all of the curriculum including thematic activities for each camp involving movement, team building, music, crafts, and storytelling

  • Managed all registration, purchasing, budgeting, and hiring

Literacy Specialist and RTI / High Peaks Elementary School
Nov 2010-May 2011

  • Provided literacy intervention for students that were behind grade level

  • Offered teacher support for literacy intervention strategies in the classroom

  • Developed, organized, and taught parent seminars on strategies for literacy support at home.

  • Prepared individualized intervention plans and led RTI meetings with parents and school staff

  • Initiated a creative writing lunch club and a school publishing center

Student Teacher / Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies
Aug 2009-Jan 2010
  • ​Student taught in first grade in this Waldorf inspired, arts integrated school
  • Developed curriculum, taught students, and communicated with families

VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE

Search and Rescue / Rocky Mountain Rescue Group
April 2010-Present
  • ​Primary responder for mountain rescue emergencies in Boulder County. One of the busiest and most technical teams in the country.
  • Extensive ongoing training involves both classroom and hands on education of knots, litter systems, brakes, rope handling, rappelling, ascending ropes, patient evacuations, rock anchors, navigation, search techniques, medical, avalanche rescue, downed aircraft rescue, county geography, and radio procedure.
  • As a team, we perform about 200 rescue missions each year. Our team is 100% volunteer.
  • Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) & Wilderness First Responder (WFR) medical training certifications
English Teacher & Orphanage Volunteer / Paisansart School & Prattachisuk Orphanage, Thailand
Jan 2010-March 2010
  • ​Taught seven English classes per day to students ranging from kindergarten to eleventh grade at the Paisansart school in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The school mainly served students from the poor hill tribe populations. Designed and implemented all curriculum.
  • Spent the weekends teaching extensive English workshops for the community and working with orphans at the Prattachisuk orphanage who were rescued from sex trafficking.
Children’s Program Volunteer / Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence
Nov 2006-May 2009
  • ​Volunteered with and advocated for abused children ages 0-18 at the Safehouse Battered Women’s shelter and transitional housing program for 10 hours per week
  • 50 hour training on domestic violence, at-risk populations, crisis management, etc.
  • Designed and implemented a curriculum using art therapy, play therapy, and drama therapy
English Teacher & Orphanage Volunteer / Rural Community Development Program, Nepal
June 2008-Aug 2008
  • ​Taught English, basic hygiene, and other skills to orphaned children in Rampur, a very remote rural village in Nepal.
Turtle Conservation and Researcher / PRETOMA, Costa Rica
May 2009-Aug 2009
  • ​Spent a summer in a remote part of Costa Rica helping to research and protect nesting sea turtles. This included collecting and analyzing data, community education, collaborating with local law enforcement, and practicing my Spanish skills

SELECTED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

JEDI (DEI) Training / 3 hours each week for the 2022-23 School Year, ~100 hours
  • Our school chose to focus the 2022-23 school year’s professional development all on JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) and we did at least three hours of training each week on it. We covered topics including: racism, gender identity, sexual orientation, black joy, legal impacts to BIPOC people, disabled people, etc.
National Geographic: Storytelling for Impact / 2020, 8 hours
  • Digital photography as a tool for storytelling in the classroom
Teacher’s College Reading and Writing Institute / 2020, 30 hours
  • Intensive program for reading and writing instruction based on Lucy Calkins units of study and methodologies
Teaching Everyday Explorers & Using Tech to Teach the World / 2020, 8 hours
  • I co-led & co-hosted this conference. National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship alumni virtual Conference (GTFurther)
Expanding Field Education Through Science and Storytelling / 2019, 30 hours
  • National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellowship alumni workshop in the South Dakota Badlands (GTFurther)
Mindspark / 2018, 8 hours
  • Led by Harvard lecturer Celine Collins, this workshop focused on story telling for impact: compelling story tools which connect innovators with decision makers; messaging and responding to difficult issues; and power mapping advocacy: getting folks to care about your idea & strategies to get key decision makers to feel your idea is relevant.
International Baccalaureate (IB) Conference, Denver / 2017, 15 hours
  • This IB workshop focused on action, both local and global, to make the world a better place. Methods and strategies to engage students in taking action in their communities and the world and how to teach the tools they would need to do this.
Engineering the Future: Tools and Technologies for Classroom Innovation/ 2017, 20 hours
  • Intensive program for reading and writing instruction based on Lucy Calkins units of study and methodologies
ISME Comprehensive Orton-Gillingham / 2017, 30 hours
  • Institute for Multi-sensory Education’s intensive literacy training uses a multi-sensory approach to explicitly teach phonemic awareness, the alphabetic principle, syllabication patterns for decoding and encoding, sight words, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Instruction on incorporating this methodology into existing reading curriculum, progress monitoring, and administering assessments.
NCCPS Conference / 2010-2017, 35 hours each year
  • NCCPS is an experiential education and group facilitation conference. Workshops include team building, community building, group facilitation, using storytelling to build community, conflict resolution, debriefing strategies, productive brainstorming, multicultural facilitation, using improv to teach risk taking, and teaching positive communication skills.
National Association of Gifted Children Conference (NAGC) / 2012-2016, 32 hours each year
  • NAGC is the largest national conference devoted to gifted learners. Presenters from all over the world including Howard Gardner. Workshops on topics such as multiple intelligences, STEM, and many ways to support gifted and twice exceptional learners both in and out of the classroom.
Presenter at Maker Ed Conference, Denver Museum of Nature and Science / 2015
  • Taught a workshop for educators on how to bring making and the arts into the classroom to better engage students and make learning experiences richer.

SELECTED ART EXHIBITIONS

  • 2010 Earth Day, Denver Performing Arts Complex, Sculpture Park- projection on large wall facing Speer Blvd., Denver, CO
  • 2010 Climate Change and the Environment, Directions Gallery, Fort Collins, CO
  • 2010 Cambio De Clima y Medio Ambiente, El Museo de la Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala City, Guatemala
  • 2010 Climate Change & the Environment, BioLounge Gallery, CU Museum of Natural History, Boulder, CO
  • 2010 Art, Ecology, & the Environment, Departamento de Cundinamarca, Bogotá, Colombia
  • 2010 Art, Ecology, & the Environment, Departamento del Amazonas , Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Leticia, Colombia
  • 2010 Art, Ecology, & the Environment, Centro Cultural Santa Teresita, Bogota, Colombia
  • 2010 Art, Ecology, & the Environment, Escuela de Artes Academia Guerrero, Bogota, Colombia
  • 2010 Art, Ecology, & the Environment, Departamento del Guaviare, Gobernación del Departamento, San Jose, Colombia
  • 2010 Art, Ecology, & the Environment, Departamento del Valle, Comunidad Indigena Nasa Yuwe, Grupo Etnico Tradicional
  • 2010 Climate Change and the Environment: Art of Portrait and Text, Garden Gallery, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi Campus, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
  • 2010 Ecology, Museo de la Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala City, Guatemala
  • 2008-9 Carla Wright Gallery, Santa Fe Ave, Denver, CO
  • 2009 Mixta, Sala Janai-Iko, Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Amazonia, Leticia, Colombia
  • 2009 Mixta, Sala de Exponsiciones Orellana, Biblioteca del Banco de la Republica, Leticia, Colombia
  • 2009 BCAA Solo Juried Art Show, Barnes and Noble, Boulder, CO
  • 2009 Polifacetica-Etnograpfia Grafica, French Embassy, Polanco, Mexico
  • 2009 Polifacetica-Etnograpfia Grafica, Encuentro de Fotograpfia de Medellin, Medellin, Colombia
  • 2009 Mixta, Sala Exposiciones Amazonas, Universidad del Estado del Amazonas UEA, Tabatinga, Brazil
  • 2009 Mixta, Sala Iquitos, Universidad Nacional del Peru Estado Loreto, Iqutios, Peru
  • 2009 Peace You Name It, Brussels, Belgium
  • 2009 Words For Life, Muriel Sibell Wolle Gallery, Boulder, CO
  • 2009 Jennifer Bolch Solo Show, Muriel Sibell Wolle Gallery, Boulder, CO
  • 2008 From This Side, Academia de San Carlos, Mexico City, Mexico
  • 2008 Poverty Awareness Showcase, University of Colorado, Boulder
  • 2005 Silpe Gallery, Hartford, CT
  • 2005 Lyme Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, Old Lyme, CT
  • 2005 Aqua Turf Club, Southington, CT
  • 2005 The Saltbox Gallery, West Hartford, CT
  • 2005 Club House Gallery-West Hartford Art League, CT
  • 2004 Lyme Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, Old Lyme, CT
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