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.
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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.
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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.
