Jalessa Bryant

Jalessa Bryant is a doctoral candidate in the Multicultural Education area of the Curriculum and Instruction Department. She earned her bachelor’s degree in American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley with a focus on Sociocultural Strategies for Child Development and a minor in Education in 2011. Jalessa has several years of pedagogical and community engagement experience in community-based educational spaces in California, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin where she served as a visual art designer, administrator, event planner, and knowledge worker. Her research explores the pedagogical activities and artifacts that emerge in Black community-based educational spaces (CBES). She focuses on decolonial praxis in curriculum planning and development, inclusive design of digital and geopolitical sites of learning, Black/African American methods for archival research, and triadic approaches to qualitative research on community-based teaching (CBT) and learning (CBL). She holds doctoral minors in Qualitative Research Methodology in Education and Visual Cultures.

Teaching

Youth Entrepreneurship Program (YEP) Pilot: Madison Black Chamber of Commerce; Set program budget and designed curriculum map (with learning goals and objectives), session plans, bullet journals, PowerPoint presentations & social media promotional materials.

Activities

Curriculum Consultant (Urban Triage):  Supporting Healthy Black Families Community-based Learning course. 

Curriculum Consultant/ Community-engaged Scholarship (CES) Educator (Madison Black Chamber of Commerce) Youth Entrepreneurship Program Community-based Learning course.

Board President (The House, Inc.): President of the Board of Directors for the House Urban Arts Initiative.

Leadership Team (The Creator’s Cottage): Trip and event organizer for participants of the Memory Collector’s Storytelling Project.

American Evaluation Association (AEA) Graduate Evaluation Diversity Internship (GEDI) Fellowship