Jessica Claire Haney is a freelance writer, tutor, editor and blogger living in Northern Virginia. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Mothering magazine and a variety of online venues in addition to poetry journals and in two forthcoming anthologies of essays on parenting. She is a contributor to DC Metro Moms Blog, and her personal blog is Crunchy-Chewy Mama. For more details and clips, see “Writing.”

Jessica is the founder and co-leader of a thriving chapter of Holistic Moms Network and an active volunteer at her son’s Waldorf school. She is passionate about natural family living.

Hear Jessica talk about High Fructose Corn Syrup in a CNN interview.

Education and Work Experience

Jessica obtained her B.A. in English with a secondary teaching certificate in English and French from Kalamazoo College, a small liberal arts school in western Michigan. She taught environmental education on the southern coast of Maine for her career development; her study abroad experience was spent in homestays in
Vichy and Clermont-Ferrand, France; and Ann Arbor Pioneer High School was the site of her student-teaching experience in composition and African-American literature.

After working for two years at The Feminist Majority Foundation in Arlington, Virginia – first as an intern and conference organizer and later as internet coordinator and content manager of www.feminist.org – Jessica pursued graduate work in English and Women’s Studies at the University of Cincinnati, completing two independent M.A. degrees in three years. Her thesis paper for English discussed the importance of addressing the socio-political context of motherhood and abortion in two novels, Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place and Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters. For her women’s studies degree, Jessica conducted qualitative interviews for an analysis of how one English class in an urban public college preparatory high school influenced students’ ideas of “diversity.”

While at the University of Cincinnati, Jessica taught the three-quarter Freshman English composition sequence and several sections of Introduction to Women’s Studies. She also taught in the summer Upward Bound program at the university.

After moving back to Northern Virginia, Jessica taught at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria. She taught English 10 (World Literature), English 11 (American Literature) and journalism, as advisor for the school’s award-winning literary magazine. She also co-chaired the faculty/staff AP/Honors Diversity Committee, which conducted research on the achievement gap and conducted interviews with students to propose recommendations regarding the racial/ethnic disparities in enrollment in honors/AP vs. “regular” level classes. Jessica also advised the student Gay/Straight Alliance.

When her son was born in 2006, Jessica retired from teaching and began working as a tutor, editor, and freelance writer.

Awards

2010 Hot Mommas Project Top 25 Finalist

2002 and 2003 Golden Apple Teaching Award, T.C. Williams High School, Alexandria, Virginia

2000 Boyce Teaching Award, University of Cincinnati Department of English

1999 Teaching Assistantship, University of Cincinnati Center for Women’s Studies (Now the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

1998 Taft Fellowship, University of Cincinnati Department of English

Phi Beta Kappa

Activities

Founder and Co-Leader, Arlington/Alexandria Chapter of Holistic Moms Network

Founder and member of NoVa Writer Mamas

Volunteer for Perinatal: A Symposium on Birth Practices and Reproductive Rights, George Mason University, October 7, 2010

Membership

American Independent Writers

The Writer’s Center of Bethesda, MD

Holistic Moms Network

La Leche League

Attachment Parenting International

International Cesarean Awareness Network