Jessica Shayne Lipaz
MA Philosophy and Education
Jess is an educator and writer from Los Angeles who can be found biking along the river path or tending to her garden.
As an educator, her teaching pedagogy is arts-based, exploratory, and rooted in identity development. She received an MA in Philosophy and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2023, where she was a fellow with the Media and Social Change Lab. In this fellowship, she developed and facilitated a media-making curriculum focused on justice and personal identity for four fifth grade classes. Her MA thesis entitled, Preparing to Teach: Reflections on discomfort and the power of the erotic for self-actualization, highlighted the importance of teacher self-actualization for honoring the multitudes of lived-experiences in the classroom.
As a writer, Jess weaves memoir with philosophy, combining her commitment to self-reflection with larger questions about human interaction and relations. She is working on a cohesive collection of essays. Driven by social contact, Jess is interested in finding ways to make her writing feel more three dimensional, inspiring play with film and documentary as a form. She is in the process of editing a film she shot about the artistic open mic community in Silverlake.
In her free time, Jess integrates herself in LA's arts and cultural ecosystem, volunteering for performance events at 2220 Arts + Archive and at a yoga studio in the Elysian Valley.
