Featured Instructors

Lead Teacher

Alexis Schleicher grew up in Norwich, Vermont, studied abroad in high school, attended college in Los Angeles, and worked in New York City before returning to the Upper Valley to pursue teaching. She has worked in private elementary schools and public high schools, museums, and has taught English, Social Studies, and a Flexible Pathways course at Hartford High School in WRJ, VT. She holds a BA in Art History & English from Occidental College and a M.Ed from New England College. She is a Highly Qualified Teacher in secondary English and Social Studies, and was 2020 VT Teacher of the Year Finalist.

Physics

Honor Passow, PhD, P.E. works full-time at Dartmouth College, teaching statistics and research methods and serving as the Director of Academic Affairs in the Master of Public Health program. She started her career in engineering after bachelors and masters degrees in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). Dr. Passow is a registered professional engineer. As a Product Engineer at Siemens, she analyzed products returned from the field to identify the root causes of failures and devise corrective actions. Her passion for teaching was active early in her career as she trained newly hired engineers during the day and -- at night -- taught calculus and engineering physics courses at local colleges. Wanting to know more about teaching and learning led her to a PhD in Education at the University of Michigan with a focus on the teaching and learning of engineering subjects, especially physics. She has coached a winning high school team to design and build a robot in the FIRST robotics competitions. She is excited to help NESA students learn about themselves and the world through physics, in a part-time role.

Film and New Media

Nora Jacobson is an award-winning independent filmmaker who writes and directs narrative films as well as documentaries. She is devoted to telling stories of women, place, justice and diversity, and believes that filmmaking can promote social change by provoking meaningful discourse. Jacobson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Herb Lockwood Award for Excellence in the Arts, a LEF Moving Image Grant, and numerous other grants from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Arts Council, and the New Jersey Arts Council, where she was named Distinguished Artist of NJ. Nora has taught filmmaking at Dartmouth College, SUNY Purchase, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Burlington College and The New School for Social Research. She is excited to work with inspired young artists and give back to a community that has been her home for many years. For more info on Nora Jacobson her website can be found at: https://www.offthegridproductions.com/