Project index


❶ Deeper learning for Burlington High School (2021-23)
❷  Counterpublic’s educator toolkit (2023)
❸ You Can Borrow My Cat Skeleton (2023)
❹ The Inspiration Project (2020 - present)
❺ Facilitation and professional development
❻ Dinner Party project-planning game for teachers  (2018-present)
❼ Sonoma County Office of Education externship program (2022)
❽ Perkins Public Prints (2020 - present)
❾ You Are a Puppet Who Sings Underwater (2020)
EDUCATOR AND ARTIST IN SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

Christina Meilene Jenkins




I’m an educator and artist whose medium is school.


I work with teachers to create the conditions for deeper learning, civic engagement and creative practice. I lead field trips for adults to reignite their relationship with learning, write curriculum that engages the public, and design professional learning experiences that are intellectually - and creatively - rigorous.  

I taught for a decade in New York City public schools, where I led a classroom that sparked curiosity and launched civic projects. After returning home to California, I was the program director at Girls Garage and a partner at Transcend, where I supported educators across the country with designing transformative schools. I have degrees from UCLA (history, urban studies), Parsons (design and technology), and Pace University (teaching).
 
I live in Sacramento on the same street where I grew up. I’m a writer and printmaker, a parent to two toddlers and partner to Dylan, I’m committed to neighboring as a verb.   

Christina M. Jenkins
Fall 2023

jenkins.christina@gmail.com
Photo by Rebecca Aranda

Burlington High School in Vermont had a big challenge: Build capacity for deeper learning across 83 teachers and a new leadership team – virtually.

We partnered with BHS’ instructional coach to design a multi-year approach to infusing deeper learning into all aspects of the professional learning program.

     Our work included:

    • Designing three summer institutes to invest in teachers’ agency and skill in teching for deeper learning 
    • Producing a set of teaching provocations, in the form of a deck of cards, that anchored BHS’ professional learning days and were designed to extend learning beyond the PD calendar
    • Partnering with the Deeper Learning Dozen, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education 
    • Producing 13 project-in-a-box kits, including custom how-to guides and exemplars
    • Curating a set of physical gifts, including discipline-specific books and materials, for department teams seeking inspiration
    • Weekly coaching meetings with the instructional coach and members of the leadership team
    • Building a digital home for our materials: www.deeperlearningatBHS.com


    Counterpublic invited us to design an educator’s toolkit to bring its civic art exhibition to life in classrooms across St. Louis.


    In collaboration with Rob Strain (Lemon Battery), we:

    • Designed a project-based learning guide specific to the city of St. Louis, including themes and essential questions, supplemental materials related to the history of the city and a sample project. Project mediums included oral histories, picture books, monuments and maps to correspond with artworks in the exhibition
    • Produced field trip guides for each of the exhibition hubs
    • Prepared a rigorous outreach strategy to engage St. Louis educators with the toolkit


    You Can Borrow My Cat Skeleton is a collection of essays and photographs that document my relationship with my local Buy Nothing Group.

    These essays, on topics ranging from scarcity to charity, explore the potential of communities like this one to strengthen cooperative relationships between neighbors and subvert dominant narratives about competition, wealth and individualism. I distributed this work for free to 140 neighbors and friends who live locally and around the country, and hope to do an updated second printing in 2024.


    The Inspiration Project offers immersive experiences that help education leaders think differently about what school can be.


    Since 2020, our virtual “field trips” have offered bite-sized access to the most innovative learning environments around the globe. These two-hour events pack a punch – provoking new ideas and stoking a sense of possibility.

    In collaboration with the Inspiration Project team, we’ve:

    • Hosted 30+ workshops for school leaders, teachers, new school founders, and non-profit educators from across the United States
    • Produced a corresponding syllabus, artwork and bonus materials in custom-designed mailings sent prior to every session
    • Featured 80+ guests whose work exemplifies themes like wellbeing, affinity, libraries & museums, disability and more
    • Facilitated a cohort for education leaders across the country, and a fellowship for teams seeking inspiration in diverse contexts



    I facilitate virtual and in-person gatherings for educators to explore what school can be and what a classroom is for.

    Recent clients have included:

    • Maryland Institute College of Art
    • The Opportunity Network
    • Transcend
    • Deeper Learning Dozen, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education
    • Sonoma County Office of Education
    • Various schools and companies across Japan


    Dinner Party is a card game for teachers to invent interdisciplinary projects that change our world for the better.



    Players match compelling topics with powerful projects to generate dozens of contemporary combinations. A mini-golf course about human rights? A memorial for extinct species? The possibilities are endless.

    The 54 topic cards are grounded in academic disciplines ranging from physics to gender studies, and can be made accessible to students of all ages. The topics are connected to contemporary problems and big questions about how we live today.

    The 54 project cards are tactics for changing the world. Writers, artists, scientists, activists and others use these objects and experiences to make an impact beyond the classroom.

    Purchase Dinner Party



    Intra-Externship (2022) is a book that documents an usual professional learning experience.

    The original invitation from the Sonoma County Office of Education: “I have three amazing team members who are hungry for a provocative collective professional development experience. They are thinking of an externship experience at an innovative public institution of some sort, with some coaching and support around who they might adapt and incorporate the approaches and practice they observe into their own work.” 

    The resulting project: In collaboration with Christi, Chris and Nicole, we defined the goals for the experience, researched innovative public agencies throughout Northern California, completed an externship with the City of Sacramento and City of West Sacramento, and documented our process and reflections in this book.


    “The way the externship was designed was really powerful because we went in with questions, but we didn’t have preconceived ideas about what we were going to do with that. So it left us open to exploring and discovering what we could possibly learn.” – Christi Calson, SCOE



    Perkins Public Prints is a Sacramento print shop that uses "signs of change" to join our neighbors in conversation and action about racial justice.


    We teach screen printing so that all of us can use the power of printmaking to express our views in public. We launched Perkins Public Prints in September 2020, thanks to the financial support of our neighbors and friends.

    We use typefaces designed by Vocal Type. All of our posters use typefaces that reference movements for justice.