Teacher
Public School 68 Port Richmond School for Visionary Learning
New York City Department of Education

U.S.: Staten Island, New York Hub | NORTH AMERICA

My name is Jessenia Nieves, and I am a special education teacher at PS 68 The Port Richmond School for Visionary Learning. I absolutely love helping students reach important milestones they will encounter with me that will set the foundation for their future learning and endeavors.

Prior, I worked for the Department of Education as a Paraprofessional for 7 years. I graduated from the College of Staten Island with my Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Education and my Master’s in Special Education. I have a profound interest in Social Emotional Wellness. As an educator, my goal is to continue to work on growing my understanding of mindfulness and its positive effect on individuals. I am a Get Ready to Learn facilitator at my school and am one of the leaders of the SEL work at my school.

I am also a part of the Compassionate Systems team at my school. Being a part of this team has helped me develop a deeper understanding of compassion and dive deep into different Compassionate Systems tools such as the Iceberg model used to dig deep into problem of practices, the Wheel of Emotions to gain a deeper understanding of one’s range of emotions and make sense of it, and the Ladder of Inference which is a tool to help visualize the thinking process that we go through, usually without realizing it, to get from a fact to a decision or action. I was able to experience a Compassionate Systems class over the course of 3 days at MIT in Boston. Additionally, I have been able to take part in Cohort 1 and support Cohort 2 of District 31 Compassionate Systems and Mindfulness classes. It has allowed me to dig deep into problems of practice at my school and figure out what are the mental models, patterns/trends, and underlying structures that are causing the problem of practice. Engaging in these frameworks has helped me become a more compassionate teacher digging deeper into the why behind the events I uncover at my school or class level. It has helped me in making better informed decisions about making assumptions, thanks to the use of the Ladder of Inference. I also have been able to make sense of my students’ emotions and others’ emotions using the Wheel of Emotions.