English Language Arts
Email:
Jazmine_bjelland@dpsk12.net
Phone:
720-424-2465
Department(s):
English
Jazmine’s choice to become an educator comes from her personal background and her belief that being an educator is inherently political. As an educator, she understands that it is a responsibility to leverage that privilege to listen to marginalized communities and to make sustained and positive change. As part of her work as an educator and part of the community, she holds many identities: As the first person in her family to graduate from high school, as a disabled person who wears hearing aids, and as a bisexual woman. She also holds privilege as an educated person, a white person, and a cisgender person. Because of these variable identities, she has always wanted to be part of a community of change. She hopes her current position at Northeast Early College as part of the English Department will become that community for her. Before working at NEC, Jazmine was an educator at Abraham Lincoln High School and worked as a long-term substitute in DPS in many schools across the district. Before her time as a teacher, Jazmine attended Des Moines Area Community College for her Associate’s in Liberal Arts before transferring to her four-year institution, Grinnell College for her Bachelor’s in English. At Grinnell, Jazmine volunteered her time with the Liberal Arts in Prison Program as a teacher and supporter of prison abolition. She was also a member of the Grinnell College Education Professionals Program. During the years 2020-2022, Jazmine attended the University of Colorado Denver and gained her Master’s in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education. In her spare time, Jazmine enjoys obsessively reading everything from novels to textbooks to restaurant menus. She paints badly, vainly attempts to keep her plants alive, and challenges herself by learning new skills as varied as soap-making, baking, and archery. She can often be found spending her time with her friends exploring the outdoors or watching a horror movie.