Jennifer Wells is Mercy High School, Burlingame's Reading and Writing Specialist, and runs both their real world and online Reading and Writing Centers. A Bay Area native, Jenn moved away to earn her B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Denver; while she was there, she tutored students in the DU Writing Center, toured around the country with a ska-punk band, and developed her affinity for hummus.
Loving the snow, but hating shoveling her car out from under it, Jenn moved back to California and over the next three years taught English at Monta Vista High School in Watsonville, CA, at Upward Bound summer programs at UCSC and Stanford, and aided in the Resource program at Mountain View High School (oddly enough, her alma mater). At that point, Jenn realized she loved writing, and loved teaching, but had no idea how to teach writing. She began her M.A. in English Composition at San Francisco State University, and for the next three years worked at Mercy during the day, and went to grad school at night. Finally completing her gianormous master's thesis, "Toward a Theory of Creative Nonfiction in Composition," which features a pirate map, Jenn graduated in 2007.
A big nerd, Jenn is a Ph.D. student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and she will most likely be writing her dissertation on secondary school writing centers.
When she is not at Mercy, or reading and writing about reading and writing, Jenn is either traveling or planning her next trip.
Jenn's other obsession is her Papillon, Ellie. Students and faculty alike are subjected to the most recent photos of Ellie.
