Founder & Practitioner, Heart Centered Practices
From a young age, I knew I wanted to be an educator. As early as high school, I felt called to be a positive male role model — someone who could lead with connection, consistency, and compassion. Over the years I’ve discovered that creating connected school communities isn’t just my passion, it’s my purpose.
Children have always been "my people." Whether in the classroom or the cafeteria, I’m the teacher who brings humor, heart, and a whole lot of dad jokes — students may know me as the "funny lunch guy" or the one with the cringeworthy dance moves, but they also know me as someone who sees them, hears them, and believes in them.
As I’ve grown, I’ve expanded into authorship with my first children’s book, I AM, supported families in and outside of school settings, and consulted with building, district, and community leaders doing "the work." I started Heart Centered Practices because I kept seeing the same thing everywhere: systems built to punish, when what people actually needed was to be seen, heard, and taught the skills to regulate and repair.
A decade-plus across three states, in the classroom and at the district level.
I’m a certified Health and Physical Education teacher with a Master’s degree in Teacher Leadership and a North Carolina Administrative License. I’ve led adult professional learning in restorative practices, Zones of Regulation, the Community Resiliency Model, school culture and climate, mediation and conflict resolution, and de-escalation — training hundreds of educators along the way.
Over a decade transforming discipline systems across three of America’s largest districts. Pioneering the Dean of Culture role, achieving 50%+ suspension reductions in multiple settings — bridging research, policy, and practice to make restorative justice accessible, measurable, and sustainable at scale.
Featured in
"Collecting targeted data is essential in noticing patterns of student behavior and teacher practices... [so we can] deliver intentional professional development opportunities."
— Adkins & DiMartino, p. 10
About the book →Heart Centered Humans build a Heart Centered World.
With love,
Jesse — Founder & Practitioner