Jennifer crooning a love song
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The author Carol S. Pearson, upon bestowing Jennifer with a leadership award several years ago, said of her, “She gets more done by 9:00 in the morning than most of us do all day.” The same could be said of her creative life, that she got more done creatively by 9 years old than many people do in a lifetime. By that age she had, among other dubious accomplishments, created the following: her own greeting card company, “JENMARK”; a school newspaper called “School Scoops”; a family newsletter called “All in the Family”; a neighborhood carnival called “Clearview Carnival”; several love ballads for the guitar; trumpet solos at Christmas; many cityscapes on her Etch A Sketch and original pieces of art on her Lite-Bright.
In 1988, at the age of 24, Jennifer received the keys to the kingdom which opened the door of her very own classroom at Dixon High School in Dixon, California. |
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She taught there for 16 years, while adding to her Bachelor's degree in English from the University of California at Davis a Master's degree in Multicultural Literature from California State University in Sacramento, and a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. Her first book,What Now?: Words of Wisdom for Life After Graduation, was published during those years, inspired by and dedicated to her high school students. Jennifer calls herself "the teacher 'No Child Left Behind left behind.'" After losing her beloved classes in mythology and psychology due to legislation that favored standardization over individuation in the classroom, she left Dixon High School with much sorrow and regret. |
Surrounded by students at Dixon High School
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After wandering the country during her 40th year pondering the koan, "Who am I if I am not a teacher?", she realized the answer was, simply, "I am a teacher." She returned to the classroom, this time at Pacifica Graduate Institute where she had recently finished her dissertation on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that later became her book, Integration: The Psychology and Mythology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and His (Unfinished) Therapy With the Soul of America.
At Pacifica, she poured all her creative energy and passion for education into her work as the designer and the founding chair of the innovative Master's degree program in Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life, and a Ph.D. program in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. She left her faculty position there in 2018, her 30th year of teaching. Around this time, she began her own boutique publishing company, Mandorla Books, which now has over 50 titles in print. Later she would add two more imprints, Empress Publications and Grace's Giant Print Books, the latter inspired by her beloved grandmother Grace, an avid reader who could no longer read regular large print books and needed some really giant ones! In 2019, her co-authored book, Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit, was published. It included 15 principles of deep creativity, principles that inform all of Jennifer's teaching, including her popular courses on deep memoir, vocation, longing, and spiritual writing. She followed that up in 2024 with Deep Memoir: An Archetypal Approach to Deepening Your Story and Broadening Its Appeal. Jennifer is the author of dozens of newspaper articles, book reviews, journal articles, three completed screenplays, and ten books (and she has another half dozen she'd like to complete by 9:00 tomorrow morning). She is a frequent invited speaker both nationally and internationally at conferences, symposiums, and workshops. |